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H. DE BALZAC 





THE 


COUNTRY PARSON 


(LE CURE DE VILLAGE) 


AND 


ALBERT SAVARON 


(DE SAVARUS) 


TRANSLATED BY 


ELLEN MARRIAGE 


AND 


CLARA BELL 


WITH A PREFACE BY 


GEORGE SAINTSBURY 


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PHILADELPHIA 
THE GEBBIE PUBLISHING CO., Ltd. 


1898 





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CONTENTS 


PREFACE . ° . ah 


THE COUNTRY PARSON— 


I. VERONIQUE y 7 A = ® 
II. TASCHERON Fe : : < < 
Ill, THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC . - 


IV. MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC 
V. VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB - 


ALBERT SAVARON (De Savarus) . 


TOE TROD 


PAGE 
ix 


136 
242 


285 





LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


WHEN VERONIQUE WAS LEARNING TO WALK, HER FATHER 
SQUATTED ON HIS HEELS FOUR PACES AWAY (p. 8.) Frontispiece 


PAGE 


“DO YOU WANT MONEY FOR SOME OF YOUR POOR PEOPLE?” . 50 
“AH! SAVE HIS SOUL AT LEAST!” . : ° - 107 
FARRABESCHE LED THE WAY, AND VERONIQUE FOLLOWED 0 a4 
“SHE IS ONE OF THOSE WOMEN WHO ARE BORN TO REIGN!” . 387 


Drawn by D. Murray-Smith, 





PREFACE. 


PERHAPS in no instance of Balzac’s work is his singular 
fancy for pulling that work about more remarkably instanced 
and illustrated than in the case of ‘‘ The Country Parson.”’ 
The double date, 1837-1845, which the author attached to it, 
in his usual conscientious manner, to indicate these revisions, 
has a greater signification than almost anywhere else. When 
the book, or rather its constituent parts, first appeared in the 
Presse for 1839, having been written the winter before, not 
only was it very different in detail, but the order of the parts 
was altogether dissimilar. Balzac here carried out his favorite 
plan—a plan followed by many other authors no doubt, but 
always, as it seems to me, of questionable wisdom—that of 
beginning in the middle and then ‘‘ throwing back’’ with a 
long retrospective and explanatory digression. 

In this version the story of Tascheron’s crime and its pun- 
ishment came first; and it was not till after the execution 
that the early history of Véronique (who gave her name to 
this part as to a ‘‘ Suite du Curé de Village ’’) was introduced. 
This history ceased at the crisis of her life ; and when it was 
taken up in a third part, called ‘‘ Véronique au Tombeau,’’ only 
the present conclusion of the: book, with her confession, was 
given. The long account of her sojourn at Montégnac, of her 
labors there, of the episode of Farrabesche, and so forth, did 
not appear till 1841, when the whole book, with the in- 
versions and insertions just indicated, appeared in such a 
changed form that even the indefatigable M. de Lovenjoul 
dismisses as ‘‘impossible’’ the idea of exhibiting a complete 
picture of the various changes made. Nor was the author 
even yet contented ; for in 1845, before establishing it in its 


(ix) 


x PREFACE. 


place in the ‘‘ Comédie,”’ he not only, as was his wont, took out 
the chapter-headings, leaving five divisions only, but intro- 
duced other alterations, resulting in the present condition of 
the book. 

As the book stands it may be said to consist of three parts 
united rather by identity of the personages who act in them 
than by exact dramatic connection. There is, to take the 
title-part first (though it is by no means the most really impor- 
tant or pervading) the picture of ‘‘The Country Parson,’’ 
which is almost an exact, and beyond doubt a designed, pen- 
dant to that of ‘‘ The Country Doctor.’? The Abbé Bonnet 
indeed is not able to carry out economic ameliorations, as 
Dr. Benassis is, personally, but by inducing Véronique to do 
so he brings about the same result, and on an even larger 
scale. His personal action (with the necessary changes for 
his profession) is also tolerably identical, and on the whole 
the two portraits may fairly be hung together as Balzac’s ideal 
representations of the good man in soul-curing and body-cur- 
ing respectively. Both are largely conditioned by his eigh- 
teenth century fancy for ‘‘ playing Providence,” and by his 
delight in extensive financial-commercial schemes. But the 
beauty of the portraiture of the ‘‘ Curé’’ is nearly, if not quite 
equal, to that of the doctor, though the institution of celibacy 
has prevented Balzac from giving a key to the conduct of 
Bonnet quite as sufficient as that which he furnished for the 
conduct of Benassis. 

The second part of the book is the crime—episodic as re- 
gards the criminal, cardinal as regards other points—of Tas- 
cheron. Balzac was very fond of ‘his crimes;’’ and it is 
quite worth while in connection with his handling of the mur- 
der here to study the curious story of his actual interference 
in the famous Peytel case, which also interested Thackeray so 
much in his Paris days. The Tascheron case itself (which 
from a note appears to have been partly suggested by some 
actual affair) no doubt has interests for those who like such 


PREFACE. xi 


things, and the picture of the criminal in prison is very strik- 
ing. But we see and know so very little of Tascheron him- 
self, and even to the very last (which is long afterwards) we 
are left so much in the dark as to his love for Véronique, 
that the thing has an extraneous air. It is like a short story 
foisted in. 

This objection connects itself at once with a similar one to 
the delineation of Véronique. There is nothing in her con- 
duct intrinsically impossible, or even improbable. A girl of 
her temperament, at once, as often happens, strongly sensual 
and strongly devotional, deprived of her good looks by illness, 
thrown into the arms of a husband physically repulsive, and 
after a short time not troubling himself to be amiable in any 
other way, might very well take refuge in the substantial, if 
not ennobling, consolations offered by a good-looking and 
amiable young fellow of the lower class. Her conduct at the 
time of the crime (her exact complicity in which is, as we 
have said, rather imperfectly indicated) is also fairly prob- 
able, and to her repentance and amendment of life no excep- 
tion can be taken. But only in this last stage do we really 
see anything of the inside of Véronique’s nature; and even 
then we do not see it completely. The author’s silence on 
the details of the actual 4azson with Tascheron has its advan- 
tages, but it also has its defects. 

Still, the book is one of great attraction and interest, and 
takes, if I may judge by my own experience, a high rank for 
enchaining power among that class of Balzac’s books which 
cannot be put exactly highest. If the changes made in it by 
its author have to some extent dislocated it as a whole, they 
have resulted in very high excellence for almost all the parts. 

As something has necessarily been said already about the 
book-history of the ‘‘ Country Parson,’’ little remains but to 
give exact dates and places of appearance. The Presse pub- 
lished the (original) first part in December—January, 1838-39, 
the original second (‘‘ Véronique ’’) six months later, and the 


xii PREFACE. 


third (‘*Véronique au Tombeau’’) in August. All had 
chapters and chapter-titles. As a book it was in its first com- 
plete form published by Souverain in 1841, and was again 
altered when it took rank in the ‘‘ Comédie”’ six years later. 

‘* Albert Savaron,’’ with its enshrined story of ‘‘ L’Ambi- 
tieux par Amour’’ (something of an oddity for Balzac, who 
often puts a story within a story, but less formally than this) 
contains various appeals, and shows not a few of its author’s 
well-known interests in politics, in affairs, in newspapers, not 
to mention the enumerations of dos and fortunes which he — 
never could refuse himself. The affection of Savaron for the 
Duchesse d’Argaiolo may interest different persons differently. 
It seems to me a little fade. But the character of Rosalie de 
Watteville is in a very different rank. Here only, except, 
perhaps, in the case of Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whose un- 
lucky experiences had emancipated her, has Balzac depicted 
a girl full of character, individuality, and life. It was appar- 
ently necessary that Rosalie should be made not wholly amiable 
in order to obtain this accession of wits and force, and to be 
freed from the fatal gift of candeur, the curse of the French 
ingénue. Her creator has also thought proper to punish her 
further, and cruelly, at the end of the book. Nevertheless, 
though her story may be less interesting than either of theirs, 
it is impossible not to put her in a much higher rank as a 
heroine than either Eugénie or Ursule, and not to wish that 
Balzac had included the conception of her in a more impor- 
tant structure of fiction. 

Albert Savaron appeared in sixty headed chapters in the 
Siecle for May and June, 1842, and then assumed its place in 
the ‘‘ Comédie.’’ But though left there, it also formed part 
of a two-volume issue by Souverain in 1844, in company with 
**La Muse du Department.’’ ‘‘ Rosalie’’ was at first named 
*¢ Philoméne.’’ 


G. S. 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


(Le Curé de Village.) 


I. 
VERONIQUE. 


At the lower end of Limoges, at the corner of the Rue de 
la Vieille-Poste and the Rue dela Cité, there stood, some 
thirty years back, an old-fashioned shop of the kind that 
seems to have changed in nothing since the middle ages. The 
great stone paving-slabs, riven with countless cracks, were laid 
upon the earth; the damp oozed up through them here and 
there ; while the heights and hollows of this primitive floor- 
ing would have tripped up those who were not careful to 
observe them. Through the dust on the walls it was possible 
to discern a sort of mosaic of timber and bricks, iron and 
stone, a heterogeneous mass which owed its compact solidity 
to time, and perhaps to chance. For more than two centu- 
ries the huge rafters of the ceiling had bent without break- 
ing beneath the weight of the upper stories, which were 
constructed of wooden framework, protected from the weather 
by slates arranged in a geometrical pattern ; altogether, it was 
a quaint example of a burgess’ house in olden times. Once 
there had been carved figures on the wooden window-frames, 
but sun and rain had destroyed the ornaments, and the windows 
themselves stood all awry ; some bent outwards, some bent in, 
yet others were minded to part company, and one and all 
carried a little soil deposited (it would be hard to say how) 
in crannies hollowed by the rain, where a few shy creeping 
plants and thin weeds grew to break into meagre blossom 


*(1) 


2 THE COUNTRY PARSON, 


in the spring. Velvet mosses covered the roof and the 
window-sills. 

The pillar which supported the corner of the house, built 
though it was of composite masonry, that is to say, partly 
of stone, partly of brick and flints, was alarming to behold 
by reason of its curvature; it looked as though it must give 
way some day beneath the weight of the superstructure whose 
gable projected fully six inches. For which reason’the local 
authorities and the board of works bought the house and 
pulled it down to widen the street. The venerable corner 
pillar had its charms for lovers of old Limoges ; it carried a 
pretty sculptured shrine and a mutilated image of the Virgin, 
broken during the Revolution. Citizens of an archeological 
turn could discover traces of the stone sill meant to hold 
candlesticks and to receive wax-tapers and flowers and votive 
offerings of the pious. 

Within the shop a wooden staircase at the further end gave 
access to the two floors above and to the atticsin the roof. The 
house itself, packed in between two neighboring dwellings, 
had little depth from back to front, and no light save from the 
windows which gave upon .the street, the two rooms on each 
floor having a window apiece, one looking out into the Rue 
de la Vieille-Poste and the other into the Rue de la Cité. In 
the middle ages no artisan was better housed. The old corner 
shop must surely have belonged to some armorer or cutler, 
or master of some craft which could be carried on in the 
open air, for it was impossible for its inmates to see until 
the heavily-ironed shutters were taken down and air as well 
as light freely admitted. There were two doors (as is usually 
the case where a shop faces into two streets), one on either 
side the pillar. But for the interruption of the white thres- 
hold stones, hollowed by the wear of centuries, the whole shop 
front consisted of a low wall which rose to elbow height. 
Along the top of this wall a groove had been contrived, and a 

similar groove ran the length of the beam above, which sup- 


VERONIQUE. 3 


ported the weight of the house wall. Into these grooves slid 
the heavy shutters, secured by huge iron bolts and bars; and 
when the doorways had been made fast in like manner, the 
artisan’s workshop was as good as a fortress. 

For the first twenty years of this present century the Lim- 
ousins had been accustomed to see the interior filled up with 
old iron and brass, cart-springs, tires, bells, and every sort of 
metal from the demolition of houses; but the curious in the 
débris of the old town discovered, on a closer inspection, the 
traces of a forge in the place and a long streak of soot, signs 
which confirmed the guesses of archzologists as to the original 
purpose of the dwelling. On the second floor there was a liv- 
ing room and a kitchen, two more rooms on the third, and an 
attic in the roof, which was used as a warehouse for goods 
more fragile than the hardware tumbled down pell-mell in the 
shop. 

The house had been first let and then sold to one Sauviat, 
a hawker, who from 1792 till 1796 traveled in Auvergne for a 
distance of fifty leagues round, bartering pots, plates, dishes, 
and glasses, all the gear, in fact, needed by the poorest cot- 
tagers, for old iron, brass, lead, and metal of every sort and 
description. The Auvergnat would give a brown earthen pip- 
kin worth a couple of sous for a pound weight of lead or a 
couple of pounds of iron, a broken spade or hoe, or an old 
cracked saucepan ; and was always judge in his own cause, 
and gave his own weights. In three years’ time Sauviat took 
another trade in addition, and became a tinman. 

In 1793 he was able to buy a chateau put up for sale by the 
nation. This he pulled down ; and doubtless repeated a pro- 
fitable experiment at more than one point in his sphere of 
operations. After a while these first essays of his gave him 
an idea; he suggested a piece of business on a large scale to 
a fellow-countryman in Paris; and so it befell that the Black 
Band, so notorious for the havoc which it wrought among old 
buildings, was a sprout of old Sauviat’s brain, the invention 


4 THE COUNTRY PARSON, 


of the hawker whom all Limoges had seen for seven-and- 
twenty years in his tumble-down shop among his broken bells, 
flails, chains, brackets, twisted leaden gutters, and heteroge- 
neous old iron. In justice to Sauviat, it should be said that 
he never knew how large and how notorious the association 
became; he only profited by it to the extent of the capital 
which he invested with the famous firm of Brézac. 

At last the Auvergnat grew tired of roaming from fair to 
fair and place to place, and settled down in Limoges, where, 
in 1797, he had married a wife, the motherless daughter of a 
tinman, Champagnac by name. When the father-in-law died, 
he bought the house in which he had, in 2 manner, localized 
his trade in old iron, though for some three years after his 
marriage he had still made his rounds, his wife accompanying 
him. Sauviat had completed his fiftieth year when he married 
old Champagnac’s daughter, and the bride herself was cer- 
tainly thirty years old at the least. Champagnac’s girl was 
neither pretty nor blooming. She was born in Auvergne, 
and the dialect was a mutual attraction; she was, moreover, 
of the heavy build which enables a woman to stand the 
roughest work ; so she went with Sauviat on his rounds, car- 
ried loads of lead and iron on her back, and drove the sorry 
carrier’s van full of the pottery on which her husband made 
usurious profits, little as his customers imagined it. La Cham- 
pagnac was sunburned and high-colored. She enjoyed rude 
health, exhibiting when she laughed a row of teeth large and 
white as blanched almonds, and, as to physique, possessed the 
bust and hips of a woman destined by nature to be a mother. 
Her prolonged spinsterhood was entirely due to her father ; 
he had not read Moliére, but he raised Harpagon’s cry of 
‘‘ Without portion!’’ scaring suitors. The ‘‘ Sas dot”’ did 
not frighten Sauviat away ; he was not averse to receiving the 
bride without a portion ; in the first place, a would-be bride- 
groom of fifty ought not to raise difficulties ; and, in the sec- 
ond, his wife saved him the expense of a servant, He added 


VERONIQUE. 5 


nothing to the furniture of his room. On his wedding-day it 
contained a four-post bedstead hung with green serge curtains 
and a valance with a scalloped edge; a dresser, a chest of 
drawers, four easy-chairs, a table, and a looking-glass, all 
bought at different times and from different places ; and till 
he left the old house for good, the list remained the same. 
On the upper shelves of the dresser stood sundry pewter plates 
and dishes, no two of them alike. After this description of 
the bedroom, the kitchen may be left to the reader’s imagina- 
tion. 

Neither husband nor wife could read, a slight defect of 
education which did not prevent them from reckoning money 
to admiration, nor from carrying on one of the most pros- 
perous of all trades, for Sauviat never bought anything unless 
he felt sure of making a hundred per cent. on the transaction, 
and dispensed with bookkeeping and counting-house by carry- 
ing on a ready-money business. He possessed, moreover, a 
faculty of memory so perfect that an article might remain for 
five years in his shop, and at the end of the time both he and 
his wife could recollect the price they gave for it toa farthing, 
together with the added interest for every year since the out- 
lay. 

Sauviat’s wife, when she was not busy about the house, 
always sat on a rickety wooden chair in her shop-door beside 
the pillar, knitting, and watching the passers-by, keeping an 
eye on the old iron, and selling, weighing, and delivering it 
herself if Sauviat was out on one of his journeys. At day- 
break you might hear the dealer in old iron taking down the 
shutters, the dog was let loose into the street, and very soon 
Sauviat’s wife came down to help her husband to arrange their 
wares. Against the low wall of the shop in the Rue de la 
Cité and the Rue de la Vieille-Poste, they propped their 
heterogeneous collection of broken gun-barrels, cart springs, 
and harness bells—all the gimcracks, in short, which served as 
a trade sign and gave a sufficiently poverty-stricken look to a 


6 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


shop which in reality often contained twenty thousand francs 
worth of lead, steel, and bell metal. The retired hawker and 
his wife never spoke of their money; they hid it as a male- 
factor conceals a crime, and for a long while were Bi foi 
of clipping gold louis and silver crowns. 

When old Champagnac died, the Sauviats made no inven- 
tory. They searched every corner and cranny of the old 
man’s house with the quickness of rats, stripped it bare asa 
corpse, and sold the tinware themselves in their own shop. 
Once every year, when December came round, Sauviat would 
go to Paris, traveling in a public conveyance; from which 
premises, observers in the quarter concluded that the dealer in 
old iron saw to his investments in Paris himself, so that he 
might keep the amount of his money a secret. It came out 
in after years that as a lad Sauviat had known one of the most ~ 
celebrated metal merchants in Paris, a fellow-countryman 
from Auvergne, and that Sauviat’s savings were invested with 
the prosperous firm of Brézac, the corner-stone of the famous 
association of the Black Band, which was started, as has been 
said, by-Sauviat’s advice, and in which he held shares. 

Sauviat was short and stout. He had a weary-looking face 
and an honest expression, which attracted customers, and was 
of no little use to him in the matter of sales. The dryness of 
his affirmations, and the perfect indifference of his manner, 
aided his pretensions. It was not easy to guess the color of 
the skin beneath the black metallic grime which covered his 
curly hair and countenance seamed with the smallpox. His 
forehead was not without a certain nobility; indeed, he 
resembled the traditional type chosen by painters for Saint 
Peter, the man of the people among the apostles, the roughest 
among their number, and likewise the shrewdest ; Sauviat had 
the hands of an indefatigable worker, rifted by ineffaceable 
cracks, square-shaped, and coarse and large. The muscular 
framework of his chest seemed indestructible. All through 
his life he dressed like a hawker, wearing the thick iron-bound 


VERONIQUE, 7 


shoes, the blue stockings which his wife knitted for him, the 
leather gaiters, breeches of bottle-green velveteen, a coat with 
short skirts of the same material, and a flapped waistcoat, 
where the copper key of a silver watch dangled from an iron 
chain, worn by constant friction till it shone like polished 
steel. Round his neck he wore a cotton handkerchief, frayed 
by the constant rubbing of his beard. On Sundays and holi- 
days he appeared in a maroon overcoat so carefully kept that 
he bought a new one but twice in a score of years. 

As for their manner of living, the convicts in the hulks 
might be said to fare sumptuously in comparison ; it was a 
day of high festival indeed when they ate meat. Before La 
Sauviat could bring herself to part with the money needed 
for their daily sustenance, she rummaged through the two 
pockets under her skirt, and never drew forth coin that 
was not clipped or light weight, eyeing the crowns of six livres 
and fifty-sous pieces dolorously before she changed one of 
them. The Sauviats contented themselves, for the most part, 
with herrings, dried peas, cheese, hard-boiled eggs and salad, 
and vegetables dressed in the cheapest way. They lived from 
hand to mouth, laying in nothing except a bundle of garlic now 
and again, or a rope of onions, which could not spoil, and 
cost them a mere trifle. As for firewood, La Sauviat bought 
the few sticks which they required in winter of the faggot- 
sellers day by day. By seven o’clock in winter and nine in 
summer the shutters were fastened, the master and mistress in 
bed, and their huge dog, who picked up his living in the 
kitchens of the quarter, on guard in the shop; Mother Sau- 
viat did not spend three francs a year on candles. 

A joy came into their sober hard-working lives; it was a 
joy that came in the natural order of things, and caused the 
only outlay which they had been known to make. In May, 
1802, La Sauviat bore a daughter. No one was called in to her 
assistance, and five days later she was stirring about her house 
again. She nursed her child herself, sitting on the chair in 


8 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


the doorway, selling her wares as usual, with the baby at her 
breast. Her milk cost nothing, so for two years she suckled 
the little one, who was none the worse for it, for little Véro- 
nique grew to be the prettiest child in the lower town, so 
pretty indeed that passers-by would stop to look at her. The 
neighbors saw in old Sauviat traces of a tenderness of which 
they had believed him incapable. While the wife made the 
dinner ready he used to rock the little one in his arms, croon- 
ing the refrain of some Auvergnat song; and the workmen 
as they passed sometimes saw him sitting motionless, gazing 
at little Véronique asleep on her mother’s knee. His gruff 
voice grew gentle for the child; he would wipe his hands on 
his trousers before taking her up. When Véronique was learn- 
ing to walk, her father squatted on his heels four paces away, 
holding out his arms to her, gleeful smiles puckering the deep 
wrinkles on the harsh, stern face of bronze ; it seemed as if 
the man of iron, brass, and lead had once more become flesh 
and blood. As he stood leaning against the pillar motionless 
as a statue, he would start at a cry from Véronique, and spring 
over the iron to find her, for she spent her childhood in play- 
ing about among the metallic spoils of old chateaux heaped 
up in the recesses of the shop, and never hurt herself; and if 
she played in the street or with the neighbors’ children, she 
was never allowed out of her mother’s sight. 

It is worth while to add that the Sauviats were eminently 
devout. Even when the Revolution was at its height Sauviat 
kept Sundays and holidays punctually. Twice in those days 
he had all but lost his head for going to hear mass said by a 
priest who had not taken the oath to the Republic. He found 
himself in prison at last, justly accused of conniving at the 
escape of a bishop whose life he had saved ; but luckily for 
the hawker, steel files and iron bars were old acquaintances of 
his, and he made his escape. Whereupon the court finding 
that he failed to put in an appearance, gave judgment by 
default, and condemned him to death; and it may be added 


VERONIQUE. & 


that, as he never returned to clear himself, he finally died 
under sentence of death. In his religious sentiments his wife 
shared ; the parsimonious rule of the household was only re- 
laxed in the name of religion. Punctually the two paid their 
quota for sacramental bread, and gave money for charity. If 
the curate of Saint-Etienne came to ask for alms, Sauviat or 
his wife gave without fuss or hesitation what they believed to 
be their due share towards the funds of the parish. The 
broken Virgin on their pillar was decked with sprays of box 
when Easter came round ; and so long as there were flowers, 
the passers-by saw that the blue-glass bouquet-holders were 
never empty, and this especially after Véronique’s birth. 
Whenever there was a procession the Sauviats never failed to 
drape their house with hangings and garlands, and contributed 
to the erection and adornment of the altar—the pride of their 
street. 

So Véronique was brought up in the Christian faith. As 
soon as she was seven years old she was educated by a gray 
sister, an Auvergnate, to whom the Sauviats had rendered 
some little service ; for both of them were sufficiently obliging 
so long as their time or their substance was not in question, 
and helpful after the manner of the poor, who lend themselves 
with a certain heartiness. It was the Franciscan sister who 
taught Véronique to read and write; she instructed her pupil 
in the History of the People of God, in the Catechism and 
the Old and New Testaments, and, to a certain small extent, 
in the rules of arithmetic. That was all. The good sister 
thought that it would be enough, but even this was too much. 

Véronique at nine years of age astonished the quarter by 
her beauty. Every one admired a face which might one day 
be worthy of the pencil of some impassioned seeker after an 
ideal type. ‘‘ The little Virgin,’’ as they called her, gave 
promise of being graceful of form and fair of face; the thick, 
bright hair.which set off the delicate outlines of her features 
completed her resemblance to the Madonna. Those who have 


10 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


seen the divine child-virgin in Titian’s great picture of the 
Presentation in the Temple may know what Véronique was 
like in these years; she had the same frank innocence of ex- 
pression, the same look as of a wondering seraph in her eyes, 
the same noble simplicity, the same queenly bearing. 

Two years later, Véronique fell ill of the smallpox, and 
would have died of it but for Sister Martha, who nursed her. 
During those two months, while her life was in danger, the 
quarter learned how tenderly the Sauviats loved their daughter. 
Sauviat attended no sales and went nowhere. All day long he 
stayed in the shop, or went restlessly up and down the stairs, 
and he and his wife sat up night after night with the child. 
So deep was his dumb grief that no one dared to speak to him ; 
the neighbors watched him pityingly, and asked for news of 
Véronique of no one but Sister Martha, The days came when 
the child’s life hung by a thread, and neighbors and _ passers- 
by saw, for the first and only time in Sauviat’s life, the slow 
tears rising under his eyelids and rolling down his hollow 
cheeks. He never wiped them away. For hours he sat like 
one stupefied, not daring to go upstairs to the sick-room, 
staring before him with unseeing eyes; he might have been 
robbed, and he would not have noticed it. 

Véronique’s life was saved, not so her beauty. A uniform 
tint, in which red and brown were evenly blended, overspread 
her face; the disease left countless little scars which coarsened 
the surface of the skin, and wrought havoc with the delicate 
underlying tissues. Nor had her forehead escaped the rav- 
ages of the scourge; it was brown, and covered with dints 
like the marks of hammer-strokes. No combination is more 
discordant than a muddy-brown complexion and fair hair ; 
the pre-established harmony of coloring is broken. Deep 
irregular seams in the surface had spoiled the purity of her 
features and the delicacy of the outlines of her face; the 
Grecian profile, the subtle curves of a chin finely moulded as 
white porcelain, were scarcely discernible between the coars- : 


VERONIQUE. 11 


ened skin ; the disease had only spared what it was powerless 
to injure—the teeth and eyes. But Véronique did not lose 
her grace and beauty of form, the full rounded curves of her 
figure, nor the slenderness of her waist. At fifteen she wasa 
graceful girl, and (for the comfort of the Sauviats) a good 
girl and devout, hard-working, industrious, always at home. 

After her convalescence and first communion, her father and 
mother arranged for her the two rooms on the third floor. 
Some glimmering notion of what is meant by comfort passed 
through old Sauviat’s mind; hard fare might do for him and 
his wife, but now a dim idea of making compensation for a 
loss which his daughter had not felt as yet crossed his brain. 
Véronique had lost the beauty of which these two had been 
so proud, and thenceforward became the dearer to them and 
the more precious in their eyes. 

So one day Sauviat came in, carrying a carpet, a chance 
purchase, on his back, and this he himself nailed down on 
the floor of Véronique’s room. He went to a sale of furni- 
ture at a chateau and secured for her the red damask-curtained 
bed of some great lady, and hangings and chairs and easy- 
chairs covered with the same stuff. Gradually he furnished 
his daughter’s rooms with second-hand purchases, in complete 
ignorance of the real value of the things. He set pots of 
mignonette on the window-sill, and brought back flowers for 
her from his wanderings ; sometimes it was a rosebush, some- 
times a tree-carnation, and plants of all kinds, doubtless given 
to him by gardeners and innkeepers. If Véronique had 
known enough of other people to draw comparisons, and to 
understand their manners of life and the characters and the 
ignorance of her parents, she would have known how great 
the affection was which showed itself in these little things ; 
but the girl gave her father and mother the love that springs 
from an exquisite nature—an instinctive and unreasoning 
love. 

Véronique must have the finest linen which her mother 


12 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


could buy, and La Sauviat allowed her daughter to choose her 
own dresses. Both father and mother were pleased with her 
moderation ; Véronique had no ruinous tastes. A blue-silk 
gown for holiday wear, a winter dress of coarse merino for 
working-days, and a striped cotton gown in summer; with 
these she was content. 

On Sunday she went to mass with her father and mother, 
and walked with them after vespers along the banks of the 
Vienne or in the neighborhood of the town. All through the 
week she stayed in the house, busy over the tapestry-work, 
which was sold for the benefit of the poor, or the plain sewing 
for the hospital—no life could be more simple, more innocent, 
more exemplary than hers. She had other occupations beside 
her sewing ; she read to herself, but only such books as the 
curate of Saint-Etienne loaned to her. (Sister Martha had 
introduced the priest to the Sauviat family.) 

For Véronique all the laws of the household economy were 
set aside. Her mother delighted to cook dainty fare for her, 
and made separate dishes for her daughter. Father and 
mother might continue, as before, to eat the walnuts and the 
hard bread, the herrings, and the dried peas fried with a little 
salt butter; but for Véronique, nothing was fresh enough nor 
good enough. 

‘¢ Véronique must be a great expense to you,’’ remarked the 
hatter who lived opposite. He estimated old Sauviat’s fortune 
at a hundred thousand francs, and had thoughts of Véronique 
for his son. 

‘‘ Yes, neighbor ; yes, neighbor ; yes,’’ old Sauviat answered, 
‘¢she might ask me for ten crowns, and I should let her have 
them, I should. She has everything she wants, but she 
never asks for anything. She is as good and gentle as a 
lamb !”’ : 

And, in fact, Véronique did not know the price of any- 
thing; she had no wants; she never saw a piece of gold till 
the day of her marriage, and had no money of her own; her 


VERONIQUE. 13 


mother bought and gave to her all that she wished, and even 
‘for a beggar she drew upon her mother’s pockets. 

“Then she doesn’t cost you much,’’ commented the hatter. 

‘¢ That is what you think, is it?’’ retorted Sauviat. ‘‘ You 
wouldn’t do it on less than forty crowns a year. You should 
see herroom! There is a hundred crowns’ worth of furniture 
in it; but when you have only one girl, you ean indulge your- 
self; and, after all, what little we have will all be hers some 
day.”’ 

‘Little? You must be rich, Father Sauviat. These forty 
years you have been ina line of business where there are no 
losses.”’ 

**Oh, they shouldn’t cut my ears off for a matter of twelve 
hundred francs,’’ said the dealer in old iron. 

From the day when Véronique lost the delicate beauty 
which every one had admired in her childish face, old Sauviat 
had worked twice as hard as before. His business revived 
again, and prospered so well, that he went to Paris not once, 
but several times a year. People guessed his motives. If his 
girl had gone off in looks, he would make up for it in money, 
to use his own language. 

When Véronique was about fifteen another change was 
wrought in the household ways. The father and mother went 
up to their daughter’s room of an evening, and listened while 
she read aloud to them from the ‘Lives of the Saints,’”’ or 
the “‘ Lettres édifiantes,’’ or from some other book loaned by 
the curate of Saint-Etienne. The lamp was set behind a 
glass globe full of water, and Mother Sauviat knitted indus- 
triously, thinking in this way to pay for the oil. The neigh- 
bors opposite could look into the room and see the two old 
people sitting there, motionless as two carved Chinese figures, 
listening intently, admiring their daughter with all the power 
of an intelligence that was dim enough save in matters of busi- 
ness or religion. Doubtless there have been girls as pure as 
Véronique—there have been none purer nor more modest. 


14 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Her confession surely filled the angels with wonder, and glad- 
dened the Virgin in heaven. She was now sixteen years old, 
and perfectly developed ; you beheld in her the woman she 
would be. She was a medium height, neither the father nor 
the mother was tall; but the most striking thing about her 
figure was its lissome grace, the sinuous, gracious curves which ~ 
nature herself traces so finely, which the artist strives so pain- 
fully to render; the soft contours that reveal themselves to 
practiced eyes, for in spite of folds of linen and thickness of 
stuff, the dress is always moulded and informed by the body. 
Simple, natural and sincere, Véronique set this physical beauty 
in relief by her unaffected freedom of movement. She pro- 
duced her ‘‘ full and entire effect,’’ if it is permissible to make 
use of the forcible legal phrase. She had the full-fleshed arms 
of an Auvergnate, the red, plump hands of a buxom inn- 
servant, and feet strongly made, but shapely, and in propor- 
tion to her height. 

Sometimes there was wrought in her an exquisite mysterious 
change ; suddenly it was revealed that in this frame dwelt a 
woman hidden from all eyes but Love’s. Perhaps it was this 
transfiguration which awakened an admiration of her beauty 
in the father and mother, who astonished the neighbors by 
speaking of it as something divine. The first to see it were 
the clergy of the cathedral and the communicants at the 
table of the Lord. When Véronique’s face was lighted up by 
impassioned feeling—and the mystical ecstasy which filled her 
at such times is ore of the strongest emotions in the life of 
so innocent a girl—it seemed as if a bright inner radiance 
effaced the traces of the smallpox, and the pure, bright face 
appeared once more in the first beauty of childhood. Scarcely 
obscured by the thin veil of tissues coarsened by the dis- 
ease, her face shone like some flower in dim places under the 
sea, when the sunlight strikes down and invests it with a 
mysterious glory. For a few brief moments Véronique was 
transfigured, the little Virgin appeared and disappeared like 


VERONIQUE. 15 


a vision from heaven. The pupils of her eyes, which pos- 
sessed in a high degree the power of contracting, seemed at 
such seasons to dilate and overspread the blue of the iris, 
which diminished till it became nothing more than a slender 
ring ; the change in the eyes, which thus grew piercing as the 
éagle’s, completing the wonderful change in the face. Was it 
a storm of repressed and passionate longing, was it some 
power which had its source in the depths of her nature, which 
made those eyes dilate in broad daylight as other eyes widen 
in shadow, darkening their heavenly blue? Whatever the 
cause, it was impossible to look upon Véronique with indiffer- 
ence as she returned to her place after having been made one 
with God ; all present beheld her in the radiance of her early 
beauty ; at such times she would have eclipsed the fairest 
woman in her loveliness. What a charm for a jealous lover in 
that veil of flesh which should hide his love from all other 
eyes; a veil which the hand of love could raise to let fall 
again upon the rapture of wedded bliss. Véronique’s lips, 
faultless in their curves, seemed to have been painted scarlet, 
so richly were they colored by the pure glow of the blood. 
Her chin and the lower part of her face were a little full, in 
the sense that painters give to the word, and this heaviness 
of contour is, by the unalterable laws of physiognomy, a cer- 
tain sign of a capacity for almost morbid violence of passion. 
Her finely-moulded but almost imperious brow was crowned 
by a glorious diadem of thick abundant hair; the gold had 
deepened to a chestnut tint. 

From her sixteenth year till the day of her marriage 
Véronique’s demeanor was thoughtful and full of melancholy. 
In an existence so lonely she fell, as solitary souls are wont, 
to watching the grand spectacle of the life within, the pro- 
gress of her thoughts, the ever-changing phantasmagoria of 
mental visions, the yearnings kindled by her pure life. Those 
who passed along the Rue de la Cité on sunny days had only 
to look up to see the Sauviats’ girl sitting at her window with 


16 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


a bit of sewing or embroidery in her hand, drawing the 
needle in and out with a somewhat dreamy air. Her head 
stood out in sharp contrast against its background among the 
flowers which gave a touch of poetry to the prosaic, cracked, 
brown window-sill, and the small leaded panes of her case- 
ment. At times a reflected glow from the red damask cur- 
tains added to the effect of the face so brightly colored 
already ; it looked like some rosy-red flower above the little 
skyey garden, which she tended so carefully upon the ledge. 
So the quaint old house contained something still more 
quaint—a portrait of a young girl, worthy of Mieris, Van 
Ostade, Terburg, or Gerard Dow, framed in one of the old, 
worn, and blackened, and almost ruinous windows which 
Dutch artists loved to paint. If a stranger happened to 
glance up at the second floor, and stand agape with wonder at 
its construction, old Sauviat below would thrust out his head 
till he could look up the face of the overhanging story. He 
was sure to see Véronique there at the window. Then he 
would go in again, rubbing his hands, and say to his wife in 
the patois of Auvergne: 

‘‘ Hullo, old woman, there is some one admiring your 
daughter ! ’’, 

In 1820 an event occurred in Véronique’s simple and un- 
eventful life. It was a little thing, which would have exer- 
cised no influence upon another girl, but destined to effect a 
fatal influence on Véronique’s future life. On the day of a sup- 
pressed church festival, a working-day for the rest of the town, 
the Sauviats shut their shop and went first to mass and then 
for a walk. On their way into the country they passed by 
a bookseller’s shop, and among the books displayed outside 
Véronique saw one called Pau/ et Virginie. The fancy took 
her to buy it for the sake of the engraving ; her father paid 
five francs for the fatal volume, and slipped it into the vast 
pocket of his overcoat. 

**Wouldn’t it be better to show it to M. le Vicaire?”’ 


VERONIQUE. 17 


asked the mother; for her any printed book‘was something 
of an abracadabra, which might or might not be for evil. 

«Yes, I thought I would,’’ Véronique answered simply. 

She spent that night in reading the book, one of the most 
touching romances in the French language. The love scenes, 
half-biblical, and worthy of the early ages of the world, 
wrought havoc in Véronique’s heart. A hand, whether dia- 
bolical or divine, had raised for her the veil which hitherto 
had covered nature. On the morrow the little Virgin within 
the beautiful girl thought her flowers fairer than on the even- 
ing of the day before ; she understood their symbolical lan- 
guage, she gazed up at the blue sky with exaltation, causeless 
tears rose to her eyes. 

In every woman’s life there comes a moment when she 
understands her destiny, or her organization, hitherto mute, 
speaks with authority. It is not always a man singled out by 
an involuntary and stolen glance who reveals the possession 
of a sixth sense, hitherto dormant ; more frequently it is some 
sight that comes with the force of a surprise, a landscape, a 
page of a book, some day of high pomp, some ceremony of 
the Church ; the scent of growing flowers, the delicate bright- 
ness of a misty morning, the intimate sweetness of divine 
music—and something suddenly stirs in body or soul. For 
the lonely child, a prisoner in the dark house, brought up by 
parents almost as rough and simple as peasants ; for the girl 
who had never heard an improper word, whose innocent mind 
had never received the slightest taint of evil; for the angelic 
pupil of Sister Martha and of the good curate of Saint-Etienne, 
the revelation of love came through a charming book from the 
hand of genius. No peril would have lurked in it for any 
other, but for her an obscene work would have been less dan- 
gerous. Corruption is relative. There are lofty and virginal 
natures which a single thought suffices to corrupt, a thought 
which works the more ruin because the necessity of combating 
it is not foreseen. 

2 


18 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


The next day Véronique showed her book to the good 
priest, who approved the purchase of a work so widely known 
for its childlike innocence and purity. But the heat of the 
tropics, the beauty of the land described in Paul et Virginie, 
the almost childish innocence of a love scarcely of this earth, 
had wrought upon Véronique’s imagination. She was capti- 
vated by the noble and sweet personality of the author, and 
carried away towards the cult of the ideal, that fatal religion. 
She dreamed of a lover, a young man like Paul, and brooded 
over soft imaginings of that life of lovers in some fragrant 
island. Below Limoges, and almost opposite the Faubourg 
Saint-Martial, there is a little island in the Vienne; this, in 
her childish fancy, Véronique called the Isle of France, and, 
filled with the fantastic creations of a young girl’s dreams, 
vague shadows endowed with the dreamer’s own perfections. 

She sat more than ever in the window in those days, and 
watched the workmen as they came and went. Her parents’ 
humble position forbade her to think of any one but an arti- 
san; yet, accustomed as she doubtless was to the idea of 
becoming a workingman’s wife, she was conscious of an in- 
stinctive refinement which shrank from anything rough or 
coarse. So she began to weave for herself a romance such as 
most girls weave in their secret hearts for themselves alone. 
With the enthusiasm which might be expected of a refined 
and girlish imagination, she seized on the attractive idea of 
ennobling one of these workingmen, of raising him to the 
level of her dreams. She made (who knows ?) a Paul of some 
young man whose face she saw in the street, simply that she 
might attach her wild fancies to some human creature, as the 
overcharged atmosphere of a winter day deposits dew on the 
branches of a tree by the wayside, for the frost to transform 
into magical crystals. How should she escape a fall into the 
depths ? forif she often seemed to return to earth from far-off 
heights with a reflected glory about her brows, yet oftener she 
appeared to bring with her flowers gathered on the brink of a 


VERONIQUE, 19 


torrent-stream which she had followed down into the abyss. 
On warm evenings she asked her old father to walk out with 
her, and never lost an opportunity of a stroll by the Vienne. 
She went into ecstasy at every step over the beauty of the sky 
and land, over the red glories of the sunset, or the joyous 
freshness of dewy mornings, and the sense of these things, the 
poetry of nature, passed into her soul. 

She curled and waved the hair which she used to wear in 
simple plaits about her head; she thought more about her 
dress. The young, wild vine which had grown as its nature 
prompted about the old elm tree was transplanted and trimmed 
and pruned, and grew upon a dainty green trellis. ) 

One evening in December, 1822, when Sauviat (now seventy 
years old) had returned from a journey to Paris, the curate 
dropped in, and after a few commonplaces— 

**You must think of marrying your daughter, Sauviat,’’ 
said the priest. ‘‘At your age you should no longer delay 
the fulfillment of an important duty.’’ 

«« Why, has Véronique a mind to be married ?’’ asked the 
amazed old man. 

** As you please, father,’’ the girl answered, lowering her 
eyes. 

*¢ We will marry her,’’ cried portly Mother Sauviat, smiling 
as she spoke. 

‘*Why didn’t you say something about this before I left 
home, mother? ’’ Sauviat asked. ‘‘I shall have to go back to 
Paris again.’’ 

In Jerome-Baptiste Sauviat’s eyes plenty of money appeared 
to be synonymous with happiness. He had always regarded 
love and marriage in their purely physical and practical as- 
pects; marriage was a means of transmitting his property 
(he being no more) to another self; so he vowed that Véron- 
ique should marry a well-to-do man. Indeed, for a long while 
past this had become a fixed idea with him. His neighbor 
the hatter, who was retiring from business, and-had an income 


20 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


of two thousand livres a year, had already asked for Véronique 
for his son and successor (for Véronique was spoken of in the 
quarter as a good girl of exemplary life), and had been politely 
refused. Sauviat had not so much as mentioned this to Vér- 
onique. : 

The curate was Véronique’s director, and a great man in 
the Sauviats’ eyes; so the day after he had spoken of Véron- 
ique’s marriage as a necessity, old Sauviat shaved himself, put 
on his Sunday clothes, and went out. He said not a word to 
his wife and daughter, but the women knew that the old man 
had gone out to findason-in-law. Sauviat went to M. Graslin. 

M. Graslin, a rich banker of Limoges, had left his native 
Auvergne, like Sauviat himself, without a sou in his pocket. 
He had begun life as a porter in a banker’s service, and from 
that position had made his way, like many another capitalist, 
partly by thrift, partly by sheer luck. A cashier at five-and- 
twenty, and at five-and thirty a partner in the firm of Perret 
& Grossetéte, he at last bought out the original partners, and 
became sole owner of the bank. His two colleagues went to 
live in the country, leaving their capital in his hands at a low 
rate of interest. Pierre Graslin, at the age of forty-seven, 
was believed to possess six hundred thousand francs at the 
least. His reputation for riches had recently increased, and 
the whole department had applauded his free-handedness 
when he built a house for himself in the new quarter of the 
Place des Arbres, which adds not a little to the appearance 
of Limoges. It was a handsome house, on the plan of align- 
ment, with a fagade like a neighboring public building; but 
though the mansion had been finished for six months, Pierre 
Graslin hesitated to furnish it. His house had cost him so 
dear, that at the thought of living in it he drew back. Self- 
love, it may be, had enticed him to exceed the limits he had 
prudently observed all his life long; he thought, moreover, 
with the plain sense of a man of business, that it was only 
right that the inside of his house should be in keeping with 


VERONIQUE. 21 


the programme adopted with the fagade. The plate and fur- 
niture and accessories needed for the housekeeping in such a 
mansion would cost more, according to his computations, 
than the actual outlay on the building. So, in spite of the 
town gossip, the broad grins of commercial circles, and the 
charitable surmises of his neighbors, Pierre Graslin stayed 
where he was on the damp and dirty ground-floor dwelling in 
the Rue Montantmanigne, where his fortune had been made, 
and the great house stood empty. People might talk, but 
Graslin was happy in the approbation of his two old sleeping 
partners, who praised him for displaying such uncommon 
strength of mind. 

Such a fortune and such a life as Graslin’s is sure to excite 
plentiful covetousness in a country town. During the past 
ten years more than one proposition of marriage had been 
skillfully insinuated. But the estate of a bachelor was emi- 
nently suited to a man who worked from morning to night, 
overwhelmed with business, and wearied by his daily round, a 
man as keen after money as a sportsman after game; so Graslin 
had fallen into none of the snares set for him by ambitious 
-mothers who coveted a brilliant position for their daughters. 
Graslin, the Sauviat of a somewhat higher social sphere, did 
not spend two francs a day upon himself, and dressed no 
better than his second clerk. His whole staff consisted of a 
couple of clerks and an office boy, though he went through 
an amount of business which might fairly be called immense, 
so multitudinous were its ramifications. One of the clerks 
saw to the correspondence, the other kept the books; and 
for the rest Pierre Graslin was both the soul and body of his 
business. He chose his clerks from his family circle; they 
were of his own stamp, trustworthy, intelligent, and accus- 
tomed to work. As for the office boy, he led the life of a 
dray horse. 

Graslin rose all the year round before five in the morning, 
and was never in bed till eleven o’clock at night. His char- 


22 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


woman, an old Auvergnate, who came in to do the housework 
and to cook his meals, had strict orders never to exceed the 
sum of three francs for the total daily expense of the house- 
hold. The brown earthenware, the strong coarse tablecloths 
and sheets, were in keeping with the manners and customs of 
an establishment in which the porter was the man of all work, 
and the clerks made their own beds. The blackened deal 
tables, the ragged straw-bottomed chairs with -the holes 
through the centre, the pigeon-hole writing-desks and ram- 
shackle bedsteads, in fact, all the furniture of the counting- 
house and the three rooms above it, would not have brought 
three thousand francs, even if the safe had been included, a 
colossal solid iron structure built into the wall itself, before 
which the porter nightly slept with a couple of dogs at his 
feet. It had been a legacy from the old firm to the present 
one. 

Graslin was not often seen in society, where a great deal 
was heard about him. He dined with the receiver-general 
(a business connection) two or three times a year, and he had 
been known to take a meal at the prefecture; for, to his own 
intense disgust, he had been nominated a member of the 
general council of the department. ‘‘He wasted his time 
there,’’ he said. Occasionally, when he had concluded a 
bargain witha business acquaintance, he was detained to lunch 
or dinner; and, lastly, he was sometimes compelled to call 
upon his old partners, who spent the winter in Limoges. So 
slight was the hold which social relations had upon him that 
at twenty-five years of age Graslin had not so much as offered 
a glass of water to any creature. 

People used to say, ‘‘ That is M. Graslin!’’ when he passed 
along the street, which is to say, ‘‘ There is a man who came 
to Limoges without a farthing, and has made an immense 
amount of money.’’ The Auvergnat banker became a kind 
of pattern and example held up by fathers of families to their 
offspring—and an epigram which more than one wife cast in 


VERONIQUE. 23 


her husband’s teeth. It is easy to imagine the motives which 
induced this principal pivot in the financial machinery of 
Limoges to repel the matrimonial advances so perseveringly 
made to him. The daughters of Messieurs Perret and Gros- 
setéte had been married before Graslin was in a position to 
ask for them; but as each of these ladies had daughters in 
the school-room, people let Graslin alone at last, taking it for 
granted that either old Perret or Grossetéte the shrewd had 
arranged a match to be carried out some future day, when 
Graslin should be bridegroom to one of the granddaughters. 

Sauviat had watched his fellow-countryman’s rise and prog- 
ress more closely than any one. He had known Graslin ever 
“since he came to Limoges, but their relative positions had 
changed so much (in appearance at any rate) that the friend- 
ship became an acquaintance, renewed only at long intervals. 
Still, in his quality of fellow-countryman, Graslin was never 
above having a chat with Sauviat in the Auvergne dialect if 
the two happened to meet, and in their own language they 
dropped the formal ‘‘ you’’ for the more familiar ‘‘ thee ’’ 
and ‘ thou.” 

In 1823, when the youngest of the brothers Grossetéte, the 
Receiver-General of Bourges, married his daughter to the 
youngest son of the Comte de Fontaine, Sauviat saw that the 
Grossetétes had no mind to take Graslin into their family. 

After a conference with the banker, old Sauviat returned in 
high glee to dine in his daughter’s room. 

“Véronique will be Madame Graslin,’’ he told the two 
women. 

“¢ Madame Graslin /”’ cried Mother Sauviat, in amazement. 

“‘Ts it possible?’’ asked Véronique. She did not know 
Graslin by sight, but the name produced much such an effect 
on her imagination as the word Rothschild upon a Parisian 
shop-girl. 

“Yes. It is settled,’’ old Sauviat continued solemnly. 
‘¢ Graslin will furnish his house very grandly ; he will have the 


24 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


finest carriage from Paris that money can buy for our daughter, 
andthe best pair of horses in Limousin. He will buy an 
estate worth five hundred thousand francs for her, and settle 
the house on her besides. In short, Véronique will be the first 
lady in Limoges, and the richest oe the department, and can 
do just as she likes with Graslin.’ 

Véronique’s boundless affection for her father and nunhiene 
her bringing-up, her religious training, her utter ignorance, 
prevented her from raising a single objection; it did not so 
much as occur to her that she had been disposed of without 
her own consent. The next day Sauviat set out for Paris, and 
was away for about a week. 

Pierre Graslin, as you may imagine, was no great talker; he 
went straight to the point, and acted promptly. A thing 
determined upon was a thing done at once. So in February, 
1822, a strange piece of news surprised Limoges like a sudden 
thunderclap. Graslin’s great house was being handsomely 
furnished. Heavy wagon-loads from Paris arrived daily to be 
unpacked in the courtyard. Rumors flew about the town 
concerning the good taste displayed in the beautiful furniture, 
modern and antique. A magnificent service of plate came 
down from Odiot’s by the mail; and (actually) three car- 
riages !—a caléche, a brougham, and a cabriolet—arrived care- 
fully packed in straw as if they had been jewels. 

‘«M. Graslin is going to be married! ’’ The words passed 
from mouth to mouth, and in the course of a single evening 
the news filtered through the drawing-rooms of the Limousin 
aristocracy to the back parlors and shops in the suburbs, till 
all Limoges, in fact, had heard it. But whom was he going to 
marry? Nobody could answer the question. There was a 
mystery in Limoges. 

As soon as Sauviat came back from Paris, Graslin made his 
first nocturnal visit, at half-past nine o’clock. Véronique 
knew that he was coming. She wore her blue-silk gown, cut 
square at the throat, and a wide collar of cambric with a 


VERONIQUE. 25 


deep hem. Her hair she had simply parted into two bandeaux, ! 


waved and gathered into a Grecian knot at the back of her 
head. She was sitting in a tapestry-covered chair near the fire- 
side, where her mother occupied a great armchair with a 
carved back and crimson velvet cushions, a bit of salvage 
from some ruined chateau. A blazing fire burned on the 
hearth. Upon the mantel-shelf, on either side of an old 
clock (whose value the Sauviats certainly did not know), 
stood two old-fashioned sconces; six wax-candles in the 
sockets among the brazen vine-stems shed their light on the 
brown chamber, and on Véronique in her bloom. The old 
mother had put on her best dress. 

In the midst of the silence that reigned in the streets at 
that silent hour, with the dimly-lit staircase as a background, 
Graslin appeared for the first time before Véronique—the shy 
childish girl whose head was still full of sweet fancies of love 
derived from Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s book. Graslin was 
short and thin. His thick black’ hair stood up straight on his 
forehead like bristles in a brush, in startling contrast with a 
face red as a drunkard’s, and covered with suppurating or 
bleeding pustules. The eruption was neither scrofula nor 
leprosy, it was simply a result of an overheated condition of 


the blood; unflagging toil, anxiety, fanatical application to” 


business, late hours, a life steady and sober to the point of 
abstemiousness, had induced a complaint which seemed to be 
related to both diseases. In spite of partners, clerks, and 
doctors, the banker had never brought himself to submit to a 
regimen which might have alleviated the symptoms or cured 
an evil, trifling at first, which was daily aggravated by neglect 
as time went on. He wished to be rid of it, and sometimes 
for a few days would take the baths and swallow the doses 
prescribed ; but the round of business carried him away, and 
he forgot to take care of himself. Now and again he would 
talk of going away for a short holiday, and trying the waters 
somewhere or other for a cure, but where is the man in hot 


26 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


pursuit of millions who has been known to stop? In this — 
flushed countenance gleamed two gray eyes, the iris speckled 
with brown dots and streaked with fine green threads radi- 
ating from the pupil—two covetous eyes, piercing eyes that 
went to the depths of the heart, implacable eyes in which 
you read resolution and integrity and business faculty. A 
snub nose, thick blubber lips, a prominent rounded forehead, 
grinning cheek-bones, coarse ears corroded by the sour humors 
of the blood—altogether Graslin looked like an antique satyr 
—a satyr tricked out in a great coat, a black satin waistcoat, 
and a white neckcloth knotted about his neck. The strong 
muscular shoulders, which had once carried heavy burdens, 
stooped somewhat already ; the thin legs, which seemed to be 
imperfectly jointed with the short thighs, trembled beneath 
the weight of that over-developed torso. The bony fingers 
covered with hair were like claws, as is often the case with 
those who tell gold all day long. Two parallel lines furrowed 
the face from the cheek-bones to the mouth—an unerring sign 
that here was a man whose whole soul was taken up with 
material interests; while the eyebrows sloped up towards the 
temples in a manner which indicated a habit of swift decision. 
Grim and hard though the mouth looked, there was something 
there that suggested an underlying kindliness, real good- 
heartedness, not called forth in a life of money-getting, and 
choked, it may be, by cares of this world, but which might 
revive at contact with a woman. 

At the sight of this apparition, something clutched cruelly 
at Véronique’s heart. Everything grew dark before her eyes. 
She thought she cried out, but in reality she sat still, mute, 
staring with fixed eyes. 

‘¢ Véronique,’’ said old Sauviat, ‘‘ this is M. Graslin.” 

Véronique rose to her feet and bowed, then she sank down 
. into her chair again, and her eyes sought her mother. But 
La Sauviat was smiling at the millionaire, looking so happy, 
so very happy, that the poor child gathered courage to hide 


VERONIQUE. 27 


her violent feeling of repulsion and the shock she had re- 
ceived. In the midst of the conversation which followed, 
something was said about Graslin’s health. The banker 
looked naively at himself in the beveled mirror framed in 
ebony. } 

“Tam not handsome, mademoiselle,’’ he said, and he ex- 
plained that the redness of his face was dué to his busy life, 
and told them how he had disobeyed his doctor’s orders. He 
hoped that as soon as he had a woman to look after him and 
his household, a wife who would take more care of him than 
he took of himself, he should look quite a different man. 

*¢ As if anybody married a man for his looks, mate! ’’ cried 
the dealer in old iron, slapping his fellow-countryman on the 
thigh. 

Graslin’s explanation appealed to instinctive feelings which 
more or less fill every woman’s heart. Véronique bethought 
herself of her own face, marred by a hideous disease, and in 
her Christian humility she thought better of her first impres- 
sion. Just then some one whistled in the street outside, 
Graslin went down, followed by Sauviat, who felt uneasy. 
Both men soon returned. The porter had brought the first 
bouquet of flowers, which had been in readiness for the occa- 
sion. At the reappearance of the banker with this stack of 
exotic blossoms, which he offered to his future bride, Vér- 
onique’s feelings were very different from those with which 
she had first seen Graslin himself. The room was filled with 
the sweet scent, for Véronique it was a realization of her day- 
dreams of the tropics. She had never seen white camellias 
before, had never known the scent of the Alpine cytisus, the 
exquisite fragrance of the citronella, the jessamine of the 
Azores, the verbena and musk-rose, and their sweetness, like 
a melody in perfume, falling on her senses stirred a vague 
tenderness in her heart. 

Graslin left Véronique under the spell of that emotion ; but 
almost nightly after Sauviat returned home the banker waited 


28 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


- till all Limoges was asleep, and then slunk along under the 
walls to the house where the dealer in old iron lived. He 
used to tap softly on the shutters, the dog did not bark, the 
old man came down and opened the door to his fellow-coun- 
tryman, and Graslin would spend a couple of hours in the 
brown room where Véronique sat, and Mother Sauviat would 
serve him up an Auvergnat supper. The uncouth lover never 
came without a bouquet for Véronique, rare flowers only to be 
procured in M. Grossetéte’s hothouse, M. Grossetéte being the 
only person in Limoges in the secret of the marriage. The 
porter went after dark to bring the bouquet, which old Gros- 
setéte always gathered himself. 

During those two months Graslin went about fifty times to 
the house, and never without some handsome present, rings, 
a gold watch, a chain, a dressing-case, or the like; amazing 
lavishness on his part, which, however, is easily explained. 

Véronique would bring him almost the whole of her father’s 
fortune—she would have seven hundred and fifty thousand 
francs. The old man kept for himself an income of eight 
thousand francs, an old investment in the Funds, made when 
he was in imminent danger of losing his head on the scaffold. 
In those days he had put sixty thousand francs in assignats 
(the half of his fortune) into government stock. It was 
Brézac who advised the investment, and dissuaded him after- 
wards when he thought of selling out; it was Brézac, too, 
who in the same emergency had been a faithful trustee for the 
rest of his fortune—the vast sum of seven hundred gold louis, 
with which Sauviat began to speculate as soon as he made 
good his escape from prison. In thirty years’ time each of 
those gold louis had been transmuted into a bill for a thousand 
francs, thanks partly to the interest on the assignats, partly to 
the money which fell in at the time of Champagnac’s death, 
partly to trading gains in the business, and the money stand- 
ing at compound interest in Brézac’s concern. Brézac had 
done honestly by Sauviat, as Auvergnat does by Auvergnat. 


VERONIQUE. 29 


And so whenever Sauviat went to take a look at the front of 
Graslin’s great house— 

‘* Véronique shall live in that palace!’’ he said to himself. 

He knew that there was not another girl in Limousin who 
would have seven hundred and fifty thousand francs paid down 
on her marriage-day, beside two hundred and fifty thousand 
of expectations. Graslin, the son-in-law of his choice, must 
therefore inevitably marry Véronique. So every evening Vér- 
onique received a bouquet, which daily made her little sitting- 
room bright with flowers, a bouquet earefully kept out of sight 
of the neighbors. She admired the beautiful jewels, the 
rubies, pearls and diamonds, the bracelets, dear to all daugh- 
ters of Eve, and thought herself less ugly thus adorned. She 
saw her mother happy over this marriage, and she herself had 
no standard of comparison; she had no idea what marriage 
* meant, no conception of its duties; and finally she heard the 
curate of Saint-Etienne praising Graslin to her, in his solemn 
voice, telling her that this was an honorable man with whom she 
would lead an honorable life. So Véronique consented to receive 
M. Graslin’s attentions. Ina lonely and monotonous life like 
hers, let a single person present himself day by day, and before 
long that person will not be indifferent ; for either an aversion, 
confirmed by a deeper knowledge, will turn to hate, and the, 
visitor’s presence will be intolerable ; or custom stales (so to 
speak) the sight of physical defects, and then the mind begins 
to look for compensations. Curiosity busies itself with the 
- face; from some cause or other the features light up, there is 
some fleeting gleam of beauty there; and at last the nature, 
hidden beneath the outward form, is discovered. In short, 
first impressions once overcome, the force with which the one 
soul is attracted to the other is but so much the stronger, 
because the discovery of the true nature of the other is all 
its own. So love invariably begins. Herein lies the secret 
of the passionate love which beautiful persons entertain for 
others who are not beautiful in appearance ; affection, looking 


30 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


deeper than the outward form, sees the form no longer, but a 
soul, and thenceforward knows nothing else. Moreover, the. 
beauty so necessary in a woman takes in a man such a strange 
character, that women’s opinions differ as much on the sub- 
ject of a man’s good looks as men about the beauty of a 
woman. 

After much meditation and many struggles with herself, 
Véronique allowed the banns to be published, and all Limoges 
rang with the incredible news. Nobody knew the secret— 
the bride’s immense dowry. If that had been bruited abroad, 
Véronique might have chosen her husband, but perhaps even 
so would have been mistaken. It was a love-match on Gras- 
lin’s side, people averred. 

Upholsterers arrived from Paris to furnish the fine house. 
The banker was going to great expense over it, and nothing 
else was talked of in Limoges. People discussed the price of 
the chandeliers, the gilding of the drawing-r6om, the mythi- 
cal subjects of the timepieces ; and there were well-informed 
folk who could describe the flower-stands and the porcelain 
stoves, the luxurious novel contrivances. For instance, there 
was an aviary built above the ice-house in the garden of the 
Hotel Graslin ; all Limoges marveled at the rare birds in it— 
the paroquets, and Chinese pheasants, and strange water- 
fowl, there was no one who had not seen them. 

M. and Mme. Grossetéte, old people much looked up to in 
Limoges, called several times upon the Sauviats, Graslin 
accompanying them. Mme. Grossetéte, worthy woman, con- 
gratulated Véronique on the fortunate marriage she was to — 
make; so the Church, the family, and the world, together 
with every trifling circumstance, combined to bring this 
match about. , 

In the month of April formal invitations were sent to all 
Graslin’s circle of acquaintance. At eleven o’clock one fine 
sunny morning a caléche and a brougham, drawn by Limousin 
horses in English harness (old Grossetéte had superintended 


VERONIQUE. 31 


his colleague’s stable), arrived before the poor little shop 
where the dealer in old iron lived; and the excited quarter 
beheld the bridegroom’s sometime partners and his two 
clerks. ‘There was a prodigious sensation, the street was filled 
by the crowd eager to see the Sauviats’ daughter. The most 
celebrated hairdresser in Limoges had set the bride’s crown 
on her beautiful hair and arranged her veil of priceless Brus- 
sels lace; but Véronique’s dress was of simple white muslin. 
A sufficiently imposing assembly of the most distinguished 
women of Limoges was present at the wedding in the cathe- 
dral; the bishop himself, knowing the piety of the Sauviats, 
condescended to perform the marriage ceremony. People 
thought the bride a plain-looking girl. For the first time she 
entered her hétel, and went from surprise to surprise. A state 


. dinner preceded the ball, to which Graslin had invited almost 


all Limoges. The dinner given to the bishop, the prefect, 
the president of the court of first instance, the public prose- 
cutor, the mayor, the general, and to Graslin’s-sometime 
employers and their wives was a triumph for the bride, who, 
like all simple and unaffected people, proved unexpectedly 
charming. None of the married people would dance, so that 
Véronique continued to do the honors of her house, and won 
the esteem and good graces of most of her new acquaint- 


- ances ; asking old Grossetéte, who had taken a great kindness 


for her, for information about her guests, and so avoiding 
blunders. During the evening the two retired bankers spread 
the news of the fortune, immense for Limousin, which the 
parents of the bride had given her. At nine o’clock the 
dealer in old iron went home to bed, leaving his wife to pre- 
side at the ceremony of undressing the bride. It was said in 
the town that Mme. Graslin was plain but well shaped. 

Old Sauviat sold his business and his house in the town, 
and bought a cottage on the left bank of the Vienne, between 
Limoges and Le Cluzeau, and ten minutes’ walk from the 
Faubourg Saint-Martial. Here he meant that he and his 


32 THE COUNTRY PARSON, 


wife should end their days in peace. The two old people had 
rooms in Graslin’s hétel, and dined there once or twice a week 
with their daughter, whose walks usually took the direction 
of their house. 

The retired dealer in old iron had nothing to do, and nearly 
died of leisure. Luckily for him, his son-in-law found him 
some occupation. In 1823 the banker found himself witha 
porcelain factory on his hands. He had lent large sums to 
the manufacturers, which they were unable to repay, so he had 
taken over the business to recoup himself. In this concern 
he invested more capital, and by this means, and by his exten- 
sive business connections, made of it one of the largest facto- 
ries in Limoges; so that when he sold it in three years after 
he took it over, he made a large profit on the transaction. 
He made his father-in-law the manager of this factory, situated 
in the very same quarter of Saint-Martial where his house 
stood ; and in spite of Sauviat’s seventy-two years, he had 
done not a little in bringing about the prosperity of a busi- 
ness in which he grew quite young again. The plan had its 
advantages likewise for Graslin; but for old Sauviat, who 
threw himself heart and soul into the porcelain factory, he 
would perhaps have been obliged to take a clerk into part- 
nership and lose part of the profits, which he now received 
in full; but as it was, he could look after his own affairs in 
the town, and feel his mind at ease as to the capital invested in 
the porcelain works. 

In 1827 Sauviat met with an accident, which ended in his 
death. He was busy with the stock-taking, when he stumbled 
over one of the crates in which the china was packed, grazing 
his leg slightly. He took no care of himself, and mortifica- 
tion set in ; they talked of amputation, but he would not hear 
of losing his leg, andso hedied. His widow made over about 
two hundred and fifty thousand francs, the amount of Sauviat’s 
estate, to her daughter and son-in-law, Graslin undertaking to 
pay her two hundred francs a month, an amount amply 


VERONIQUE. 33 


sufficient for her needs. She persisted in living on without 
a servant in the little cottage; keeping her point with the 
obstinacy of old age and in spite of her daughter’s entreat- 
ies; but, on the other hand, she went almost every day to 
the Hétel Graslin, and Véronique’s walks, as heretofore, 
usually ended at her mother’s house. There was a charm- 
ing view from the windows of the river andthe little island 
in the Vienne, which Véronique had loved in the old days, 
and called her Isle of France. 

The story of the Sauviats has been anticipated partly to save 
interruption to the other story of the Graslins’ household, partly 
because it serves to explain some of the reasons of the retired 
life which Véronique Graslin led. The old mother foresaw 
how much her child might one day be made to suffer through 
Graslin’s avarice ; for long she held out, and refused to give 
up the rest of her fortune, and only gave way when Véron- 
ique insisted upon it. Véronique was incapable of imagin- 
ing circumstances in which a wife desires to have the control 
of her property, and acted upon a generous impulse; in this 
way she meant to thank Graslin for giving her back her 
liberty. 

The unaccustomed splendors of Graslin’s marriage had been 
totally at variance with his habits and nature. The great 
capitalist’s ideas were very narrow. Véronique had had no 
opportunity of gauging the man with whom she must spend the 
rest of her life. During those fifty-five evening visits Graslin 
had shown but one side of his character—the man of business, 
- the undaunted worker who planned and carried out large 
undertakings, the capitalist who looked at public affairs with 
a view to their probable effect on the bank-rate and oppor- 
tunities of money-making. And, under the influence of his 
father-in-law’s million, Graslin had behaved generously in 
those days, though even then his lavish expenditure was 
made to gain his own ends; he was drawn ‘into expense in 
the springtide days of his marriage partly by the possession 

3 


34 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


of the great house, which he called his ‘‘ Folly,’’ the house 
still called the Hétel Graslin in Limoges. 

As he had the horses, the caléche, and brougham, it was 
natural to make use of them to pay a round of visits on his 
marriage, and to go to the dinner-parties and dances given in 
honor of the bride by official dignitaries and wealthy houses. _ 
Acting on the impulses which carried him out of his ordinary 
sphere, Graslin was ‘‘at home’’ to callers one day in the 
week, and sent to Paris for a cook. For about a year, indeed, 
he led the ordinary life of a man who has seventeen hundred 
thousand francs of his own, and can command a capital of 
three millions. He had come to be the most conspicuous 
personage in Limoges. During that year he generously al- 
lowed Mme. Graslin twenty-five twenty-franc pieces every 
month, 

Véronique on her marriage had become a person of great 
interest to the rank and fashion of Limoges; she was a kind 
of godsend to the idle curiosity which finds such meagre suste- 
nance in the provinces. Véronique who had so suddenly made 
her appearance was a phenomenon, the more closely scruti- 
nized on that account ; but she always maintained the simple 
and unaffected attitude of an onlooker who watches manners 
and usages unknown to her, and seeks to conform to them. 
From the first she had been pronounced to have a good figure 
and a plain face, and now it was decided that she was good- 
natured, but stupid. She was learning so many things at once, 
she had so much to see and to hear, that her manner and talk 
gave some color to this accusation. A sort of torpor, more- 
over, had stolen over her which might well be mistaken for 
stupidity. Marriage, that ‘‘ difficult profession’’ of wifehood, 
as she called it, in which the Church, the Code, and her own 
mother bade her practice the most complete resignation and 
perfect obedience, under pain of breaking all laws human and 
divine, and bringing about irreparable evils; marriage had 
plunged her into a bewildernient which grew to the pitch of 


VERONIQUE. 35 


vertigo and delirium. While she sat silent and reserved, she 
heard her own thoughts as plainly as the voices about her. 
For her ‘‘ existence’’ had come to be extremely ‘“‘ difficult,’’ 
to use the phrase of the dying Fontenelle, and ever more 
increasingly, till she grew frightened, she was afraid of her- 
self. Nature recoiled from the orders of the soul; the body 
tebelled against the will. The poor snared creature wept on 
the bosom of the great Mother of the sorrowful and afflicted ; 
she betook herself to the Church, she redoubled her fervor, 
she confided to her director the temptations which assailed 
her, she poured out her soul in prayer. Never at any time in 
her life did she fulfill her religious duties so zealously. The 
tempest of despair which filled her when she knew that she 
did not love her husband flung her at the foot of the altar, 
where divine comforting voices spoke to her of patience. 
And she was patient and sweet, living in hope of the joys of 
motherhood. 

“Did you see Mme. Graslin this morning?’’ the women 
asked among themselves. ‘‘ Marriage does not agree with 
her ; she looked quite ghastly.’’ 

** Yes; but would you have given a daughter of yours toa 
man like M. Graslin? Of course, if you marry such a mon- 
ster, you suffer for it.’’ 

As soon as Graslin was fairly married, all the mothers who 
had assiduously hunted him for the past ten years directed 
spiteful speeches at him. Véronique grew thin, and became 
plain in good earnest. Her eyes were heavy, her features 
coarsened, she looked shamefaced and embarrassed, and wore 
the dreary, chilling expression so repellent in bigoted devo- 
tees. A grayish tint overspread her complexion. She dragged 
herself languidly about during the first year of her marriage, 
usually the heyday of a woman’s life. Before very long she 
sought for distraction in books, making use of her privilege as 
a married woman to read everything. She read Scott’s novels, 
Byron’s poems, the works of Schiller and Goethe, literature 


36 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


ancient and modern. She learned to ride, to dance, and 
draw. She made sepia drawings and sketches in water-color, 
eager to learn every device which women use to while away 
the tedium of solitary hours; in short, that second education 
which a woman nearly always undertakes for a man’s sake and 
with his guidance, she undertook alone and for herself. 

In the loftiness of a nature frank and free, brought up, as. 
it were, in the desert, but fortified by religion, there was a 
| wild grandeur, cravings which found no satisfaction in the 
provincial society in which she moved. All the books de- 
scribed love; she looked up from her books on life, and 
found no traces of passion there. Love lay dormant in her 
heart like the germs which wait for the sun. Through a pro- 
found melancholy, caused by constant brooding over herself, 
she came by dim and winding ways back to the last bright 
dreams of her girlhood. She dwelt more than once on the 
old romantic imaginings, and became the heroine and the 
theatre of the drama. Once again she saw the island bathed 
in light, full of blossom and sweet scents, and all things grate- 
ful to her soul. 

Not seldom her sad eyes wandered over her rooms with 
searching curiosity; the men she saw were all like Graslin; 
she watched them closely, and seemed to turn questioningly 
from them to their wives; but on the women’s faces she saw 
no sign of her own secret trouble, and sadly and wearily she 
returned to her starting-point, uneasy about herself. Her 
highest thoughts met with a response in the books which she 
read of a morning, their wit pleased her; but in the evening 
she heard nothing but commonplace thoughts, which no one 
attempted to disguise by giving a witty turn to them; the talk 
around her was vapid and empty, or ran upon gossip and local 
news, which had no interest for her. She wondered some- 
times at the warmth of discussions in which there was no 
question of sentiment, for her the very core of life. She was 
often seen gazing before her with fixed, wide eyes, thinking, 


VERONIQUE, 37 


doubtless, of hours which she had spent, while still a girl 
ignorant of life, in the room where everything had been in 
keeping with her fancies, and now laid in ruins, like Véron- 
ique’s own existence. She shrank in pain from the thought of 
being drawn into the eddy of petty cares and interests like 
the other women among whom she was forced to live ; her ill- 
concealed disdain of the littleness of her lot, visible upon her 
lips and brow, was taken for upstart insolence. 

Mme. Graslin saw the coolness upon all faces, and felt a 
certain bitter tone in the talk. She did not understand the 
reason, for as yet she had not made a friend sufficiently inti- 
‘mate to enlighten or counsel her. Injustice, under which 
small natures chafe, compels loftier souls to return within 
themselves, and induces in them a kind of humility. Véron- 
ique blamed herself, and tried to discover where the fault lay. 
She tried to be gracious, she was pronounced to be insincere ; 
she redoubled her kindliness, and was said to be a hypocrite 
(her devotion giving color to the slander) ; she was lavish of 
hospitality, and gave dinners and dances, and was accused of 
pride. All Mme. Graslin’s efforts were unsuccessful. She 
was misjudged and repulsed by the petty querulous pride of 
provincial coteries, where susceptibilities are always upon the 
watch for offenses ; she went no more into society, and lived 
in the strictest retirement. The love in her heart turned to 
the Church. The great spirit in its feeble house of flesh saw 
in the manifold behests of Catholicism but so many stones set 
by the brink of the precipices of life, raised there by chari- 
table hands to prop human weakness by the way. So every 
least religious observance was practiced with the most punctil- 
ious care. 

Upon this, the Liberal party added Mme. Graslin’s name 
to the list of bigots in the town. She was classed among the 
Ultras, and party spirit strengthened the various grudges 
which Véronique had innocently stored up against herself, 
with its periodical exacerbations. But as she had nothing to 


38 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


lose by this ostracism, she went no more into society, and be- 
took herself to her books, with the infinite resources which 
they opened to her. She thought over her reading, she 
compared methods, she increased the amount of her actual 
knowledge and her power of acquiring it, and by so doing 
opened the gateways of her mind to curiosity. 

It was at this period of close and persistent study, while 
religion supported her, that she gained a friend in M. Gros- 
setéte, an old man whose real ability had not grown so rusty 
in the course of a life in a country town but that contact with 
a keen intelligence could still draw a few sparks from it. The 
kind soul was deeply interested in Véronique, who, in return 
for the mild warmth of the mellowed affection which age alone 
can give, put forth all the treasures of her soul; for him the 
splendid powers cultivated in secret first blossomed forth. 

A fragment of a letter written at this time to M, Grossetéte 
will describe the mental condition of a woman who one day 
should give proof of a firm temper and lofty nature: 


‘The flowers which you sent to me for the dance were very 
lovely, yet they suggested painful thoughts. The sight of that 
beauty, gathered by you to decorate a festival, and to fade on 
my breast and in my hair, made me think of other flowers 
born to die unseen in your woods, to shed sweet scent that no 
one breathes. Then I asked myself why I was dancing, why 
I had decked myself with flowers, just as I ask God why I 
am here in the world. You see, my friend, that in everything 
there lurks a snare for the unhappy, just as the drollest trifles 
bring the sick back to their own sufferings. That is the 
worst of some troubles: they press upon us so constantly that 
they shape themselves into an idea which is ever present in 
our minds. An ever-present trouble ought surely to be a 
hallowed thought. You love flowers for their own sake; I 
love them as I love beautiful-music. As I once told you, 
the secret of a host of things is hidden from me—— You, 


VERONIQUE. 39 


my old friend, for instance, have a passion for gardening. 
When you come back to town, teach me to share in this taste 
of yours ; send me with a light footstep to my hothouse to feel 
the interest which you take in watching your plants grow. You 
seem to me to live and blossom with them, to take a delight in 
them, as in something of your own creation ; to discover new 
colors, novel splendors, which come forth under your eyes, 
the result of your labors. I feel that the emptiness of my life 
is breaking my heart. For me, my hothouse is full of pining 
souls, ‘The distress which I force myself to relieve saddens 
my very soul. I find some young mother without linen for 
her newborn babe, some old man starving, I make their 
troubles mine, and even when I have helped them, the feel- 
ings aroused in me by the sight of misery relieved are not 
enough to satisfy my soul. Oh! my friend, I feel that I have 
great powers asserting themselves in me, powers of doing evil, 
it may be, which nothing can crush—powers that the hardest 
commandments of religion cannot humble. When I goto see 
my mother, when I am quite alone among the fields, I feel 
that I must cry aloud, andI cry. My body is the prison in 
-which one of the evil genii has pent up some moaning crea- 
ture, until the mysterious word shail be uttered which shatters 
the cramping cell. But this comparison is not just. In my 
case it should be reversed. It is the body which is a prisoner, 
if I may make use of the expression. Does not religion 
occupy my soul? And the treasures gained by reading are 
constant food for the mind. Why do I long for any change, 
even if it comes as suffering—for any break in the enervating 
peace of my lot? Unless I find some sentiment to uphold 
me, some strong interest to cultivate, I feel that I shall drift 
towards the abyss where every idea grows hazy and meaning- 
less, where character is enervated, where the springs of one’s 
being grow slack and inert, where I shall be no longer the 
woman nature intended me to be. That is what my cries 
mean But you will not cease to send flowers to me 





40 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


because of this outcry of mine? Your friendship has been 
so sweet and pleasant a thing, that it has reconciled me 
with myself for several months. Yes, I feel happy when I 
think that you sometimes throw a friendly glance over the 
blossoming desert-place, my inner self; that the wanderer, 
half-dead after her flight on the fiery steed of a dream, will 
meet with a kind word of greeting from you on her return,”’ 


Three years after Véronique’s marriage, it occurred to 
Graslin that his wife never used the horses, and, a good op- 
portunity offering itself, he sold them. The carriages were 
sold at the same time, the coachman was dismissed, and the 
cook from Paris transferred to the bishop’s establishment. A 
woman-servant took his place. Graslin ceased to give his 
wife an allowance, saying that he would payali the bills. He 
was the happiest man in the world when he met with no op- 
- position from the wife who had brought hima million. There 
was not much merit, it is true, in Mme. Graslin’s self-denial. 
She knew nothing of money, she had been brought up in 
ignorance of it as an indispensable element in life. Graslin 
found the sums which he had given to her lying in a corner 
of her desk; scarcely any of it had been spent. Véronique 
gave to the poor, her trousseau had been so large that as yet 
she had had scarcely any expenses for dress. Graslin praised 
Véronique to all Limoges as the pattern of wives. 

The splendor of the furniture gave him pangs, so he had it 
all shrouded in covers. His wife’s bedroom, boudoir, and 
dressing-room alone escaped this dispensation, an economical . 
measure which economized nothing, for the wear and tear to 
the furniture is the same, covers or no covers. 

He next took up his abode on the ground floor, where the 
counting-house and office had been established, so he began 
his old life again, and was as keen in pursuit of gain as before. 
The Auvergnat banker thought himself a model husband be- 
cause he breakfasted and dined with his wife, who carefully 


VERONIQUE. 41 


ordered the meals for him; but he was so extremely unpunc- 
tual, that he came in at the proper hour scarce ten times a 
month; and though, out of thoughtfulness, he asked her never 
to wait for him, Véronique always stayed to carve for him; 
she wanted to fulfill her wifely duties in some one visible 
manner. His marriage had not been a matter to which the 
banker gave much thought; his wife represented the sum of 
seven hundred and fifty thousand francs; he had not discov- 
ered that that wife shrank from him. Gradually he had left 
Mme. Graslin to herself, and became absorbed in business; 
and when he took it into his head to have a bed put up for 
himself in a room next to his private office, Véronique saw that 
his wishes were carried out at once. 

So after three years of marriage this ill-assorted couple went 
their separate ways as before, and felt glad to return to them. 
The capitalist, owner now of eighteen hundred thousand 
francs, returned to his occupation of money-making with all 
the more zest after the brief interval. His two clerks and the 
Office-boy were somewhat better lodged and a little better fed 
—that was all the difference between the past and the present. 
His wife had a cook and a waiting-maid (the two servants 
could not well be dispensed with), and no calls were made on 
Graslin’s purse except for strict necessaries. 

And Véronique was happy in the turn things had taken; 
she saw in the banker’s satisfaction a compensation for a sep- 
aration for which she had never asked; it was impossible 
that Graslin should shrink from her as she shrank from him. 
She was half-glad, half-sorry of this secret divorce; she had 
looked forward to motherhood, which should bring a new 
interest into her life; but in spite of their mutual resig- 
nation, there was no child of the marriage as yet in 1828. 

So Mme. Graslin, envied by all Limoges, led as lonely 
a life in her splendid home as formerly in her father’s 
hovel; but the hopes and the childish joys of inexperience 
were gone. She lived in the ruins of her ‘castles in Spain,”’ 


42 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


enlightened by sad experience, sustained by a devout faith, 
busying herself for the poor of the district, whom she loaded 
with kindnesses. She made baby linen for them; she gave 
sheets and bedding to those who lay on straw; she went 
everywhere with her maid—a good Auvergnate whom her 
mother found for her. This girl attached herself body and 
soul to her mistress, and became a charitable spy for her, 
whose mission it was to find out trouble to soothe and distress 
to relieve. This life of busy benevolence and of punctilious 
performance of the duties enjoined by the Church was a hidden 
life, only known by the curés of the town who directed it, for 
Véronique took their counsel in all that she did, so that the 
money intended for the deserving poor should not be squan- 
dered by vice. 

During these years Véronique found another friendship 
quite as precious tg her and as warm as her friendship with old 
Grossetéte. She became one of the flock of the Abbé Du- 
theil, one of the vicars-general of the diocese. This priest 
belonged to the small minority among the French clergy who 
lean towards concession, who would fain associate the Church 
with the popular cause. By putting evangelical principles in 
practice, the Church should gain her old ascendency over the 
people, whom she could then bind to the Monarchy. But 
the Abbé Dutheil’s merits were unrecognized, and he was 
persecuted. Perhaps he had seen that it was hopeless to 
attempt to enlighten the Court of Rome and the clerical 
party; perhaps he had sacrificed his convictions at the bid- 
ding of his superiors ; at any rate, he dwelt within the limits 
of the strictest orthodoxy, knowing the while that the mere 
expression of his convictions would close his way to a bish- 
opric. A great and Christian humility, blended with a lofty 
character, distinguished this eminent churchman. He had 
neither pride nor ambition, and stayed at his post, doing his 
duty in the midst of peril. The Liberal party in the town, 
who knew nothing of his motives, quoted his opinions in 


VERONIQUE. 43 


support of their own, and reckoned him as a ‘‘ patriot,’’ a 
word which means ‘‘a revolutionaire’’ for good Catholics. 
He was beloved by those below him, who did not dare to 
praise his worth; dreaded by his equals, who watched him 
narrowly ; and a thorn in the side of his bishop. He was 
not exactly persecuted, his learning and virtues were too well 
known ; it was impossible to find fault with him freely, though 
he criticised the blunders in policy by which the Throne and 
the Church alternately compromised each other, and pointed 
out the inevitable results; like poor Cassandra, he was reviled 
by his own party before and after the fall which he predicted. 
Nothing short of a revolution was likely to shake the Abbé 
Dutheil from his place; he was a foundation-stone in the 
Church, an unseen block of granite on which everything else 
rests. His utility was recognized, and—he was left in his 
place, like most of the real power of which mediocrity is 
jealous and afraid. If, like the Abbé de Lamennais, he had 
taken up the pen, he would probably have shared his fate; at 
him, too, the thunderbolts of Rome would have been 
launched. 

In person the Abbé Dutheil was commanding. Something 
in his appearance spoke of a soul so profound that the surface 
is always calm and smooth. His height and spare frame did 
not mar the general effect of the outlines of his figure, which 
vaguely recalled those forms which Spanish painters loved 
best to paint for great monastic thinkers and dreamers—forms 
which Thorvaldsen in our own time has selected for his 
apostles. His face, with the long, almost austere lines in it, 
which bore out the impression made by the straight folds of 
his garments, possessed the same charm which the sculptors 
of the middle ages discovered and recorded in the mystic 
figures about the doorways of their churches, His grave 
thoughts, grave words, and grave tones were ail in keeping, 
and the expression of the Abbé’s personality. At the first 
sight of the dark eyes, which austerity had surrounded with 


44 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


hollow shadowy circles; the forehead, yellowed like old 
marble; the bony outlines of the head and hands, no one 
could have expected to hear any voice but his, or any teaching 
but that which fell from his lips. It was this purely physical 
grandeur, in keeping with the moral grandeur of his nature, 
that gave him a certain seeming haughtiness and aloofness, 
belied, it is true, by his humility and his talk, yet unpre- 
possessing in the first instance. In a higher position these 
qualities would have been advantages which would have 
enabled him to gain a necessary ascendency over the crowd 
—an ascendency which it is quick to feel and to recognize ; 
but he was a subordinate, and a man’s superiors never pardon 
him for possessing the natural insignia of power, the majesty 
so highly valued in an older time, and often so signally 
lacking in modern upholders of authority. 

His colleague, the Abbé de Grancour, the other vicar- 
general of the diocese, a blue-eyed, stout little man with a 
florid complexion, worked willingly enough with the Abbé 
Dutheil, albeit their opinions were diametrically opposed; a 
curious phenomenon, which only a wily courtier will regard 
as a natural thing; but, at the same time, the Abbé de Gran- 
cour was very careful not to commit himself in any way 
which might cost him the favor of his bishop ; the little man 
would have sacrificed anything (even convictions) to stand 
well in that quarter. He had a sincere belief in his colleague, 
he recognized his ability ; in private he admitted his doctrines, 
while he condemned them in public; for men of his kind 
are attracted to a powerful character, while they fear and hate 
the superiority whose society they cultivate. ‘‘ He would put 
his arms round my neck while he condemned me,’’ said the 
Abbé Dutheil. The Abbé de Grancour had neither friends 
nor enemies, and was likely to die a vicar-general. He gave 
out that he was drawn to Véronique’s house by a wish to give 
a woman so benevolent and so devout the benefit of his 
counsels, and the bishop signified his approval; but, in 


VERONIQUE. 45 


reality, he was only too delighted to spend an evening now 
and then in this way with the Abbé Dutheil. 

From this time forward both priests became pretty constant 
visitors in Véronique’s house; they used to bring her a sort 
of general report of any distress in the district, and talk over 
the best means of benefiting the poor morally and materially ; 
but year by year M. Graslin drew the purse-strings closer and 
closer ; for, in spite of ingenious excuses devised by his wife 
and Aline the maid, he suspected that all the money was not 
required for expenses of dress and housekeeping. He grew 
angry at last when he reckoned up the amount which his wife 
gave away. He himself would go through the bills with the 
cook, he went minutely into the details of their expenditure, 
and showed himself the great administrator that he was by 
demonstrating conclusively from his own experience that it 
was possible to live in luxury on three thousand francs per 
annum. Whereupon he compounded the matter with his 
wife by allowing her a hundred francs a month, to be duly 
accounted for, pluming himself on the royal bounty of the 
grant. The garden, now handed over to him, was ‘‘ done 
up’’ of a Sunday by the porter, who had a liking for garden- 
ing. After the gardener was dismissed, the conservatory was 
turned to account as a warehouse, where Graslin deposited the 
goods left with him as security for small loans. The birds in 
the aviary above the ice-house were left to starve, to save the 
expense of feeding them ; and when at length a winter passed 
without a single frost, he took that opportunity of declining 
to pay for ice any longer. By the year 1828 every article of 
luxury was curtailed, and parsimony reigned undisturbed in 
the Hétel Graslin. 

During the first three years after Graslin’s marriage, with 
his wife at hand to make him follow out the doctor’s instruc- 
tions, his complexion had somewhat improved; now it 
inflamed again, and became redder and more florid than in 
the past. So largely, at the same time, did his business 


46 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


increase, that the porter was promoted to be a clerk (as his 
master had been before him), and another Auvergnat had to 
be found to do the odd jobs of the Hétel Graslin. 

After four years of married life the woman who had so 
much wealth had not three francs to call her own. To the 
niggardliness of her parents succeeded the no less niggardly 
dispensation of her husband; and Mme. Graslin, whose 
' benevolent impulses were checked, felt the need of money 
for the first time. 

In the beginning of the year 1828 Véronique had recovered 
the bloom of health which had lent such beauty to the inno- 
cent girl who used to sit at the window in the old house in 
the Rue de la Cité. She had read widely since those days ; 
she had learned to think and to express her thoughts; the 
habit of forming accurate judgments had lent profundity to 
her features. The little details of social life had become 
familiar to her, she wore a fashionable toilet with the most 
perfect ease and grace. If chance brought her into a draw- 
ing-room at this time, she found, not without surprise, that 
she was received with something like respectful esteem; this 
way of regarding her, like her reception, was due to the two 
vicars-general and old Grossetéte. The bishop and one or 
two influential people, hearing of Véronique’s unwearying 
benevolence, had talked about this fair life hidden from the 
world, this violet perfumed with virtues, this blossom of un- 
feigned piety. So, all unknown to Mme. Graslin, a revolu- 
tion had been wrought in her favor; one of those reactions 
so much the more lasting and sure because they are slowly 
affected. With this right-about-face in opinion Véronique 
became a power in the land. Her drawing-room was the 
resort of the luminaries of Limoges; the practical change 
was brought about by this means: 

The young Vicomte de Granville came to the town at the 
end of that year, preceded by the ready-made reputation 
which awaits a Parisian on his arrival] in the provinces, He 


VERONIQUE. ; 47 


had been appointed deputy public prosecutor to the Court 
of Limoges. A few days after his arrival he said, in answer 
to a sufficiently silly question, that Mme. Graslin was the 
cleverest, most amiable, and most distinguished woman in 
the city, and this at the prefect’s ‘‘ At Home,’’ and before a 
whole room full of people. 

«¢ And the most beautiful as well, perhaps ?”’ suggested the 
receiver-general’s wife. 

«« There I do not venture to agree with you,’’ he answered ; 
‘when you are present I am unable to decide. Mme. Gras- 
lin’s beauty is not of a kind which should inspire jealousy in 
you, she never appears in broad daylight. Mme. Graslin is 
only beautiful for those whom she loves ; you are beautiful for 
all eyes. If Mme. Graslin is deeply stirred, her face is trans- 
formed by its expression. It is like a landscape, dreary in 
winter, gloriousinsummer. Most people only see it in winter ; 
but if you watch her while she talks with her friends on some 
literary or philosophical subject, or upon some religious ques- 
tion which interests her, her face lights up, and suddenly she 
becomes another woman, a woman of wonderful beauty.”’ 

This declaration, a recognition of the same beautiful trans- 
figuration which Véronique’s face underwent as she returned 
to her place from the communion table, made a sensation in 
Limoges, for the new substitute (destined, it was said, to be 
attorney-general one day) was the hero of the hour. In 
every country town a man a little above the ordinary level 
becomes for a shorter or longer time the subject of a craze, a 
sham enthusiasm to which the idol of the moment falls a 
victim. To these freaks of the provincial drawing-room we 
owe the local genius and the person who suffers from the 
chronic complaint of unappreciated superiority. Sometimes 
it is native talent which women discover and bring into fashion, 
but more frequently it is some outsider ; and for once, in the 
case of the Vicomte de Granville, the homage was paid to 
genuine ability, 


48 : THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


The Parisian found that Mme. Graslin was the only woman 
with whom he could exchange ideas or carry on a sustained 
and varied conversation ; and a few months after his arrival, 
as the charm of her talk and manner gained upon him, he 
suggested to some of the prominent men in the town, and to 
the Abbé Dutheil among them, that they might make their 
party at whist of an evening in Mme. Graslin’s drawing-room. 
So Véronique was at home to her friends for five nights in the 
week (two days she wished to keep free, she said, for her own 
concerns) ; and when the cleverest men in the town gathered 
about Mme. Graslin, others were not sorry to take brevet rank 
as wits by spending their evenings in her society. Véronique 
received the two or three distinguishéd military men stationed 
in the town or on the garrison staff. The entire freedom of dis- 
cussion enjoyed by her visitors, the absolute discretion required 
of them, tacitly and by the adoption of the manners of the 
best society, combined to make Véronique exclusive and very 
slow to admit those who courted the honor of her society to 
her circle. Other women saw not without jealousy that the 
cleverest and pleasantest men gathered round Mme. Graslin, 
and her power was the more widely felt in Limoges because 
she was exclusive. The four or five women whom she accepted 
were strangers to the district, who had accompanied their 
husbands from Paris, and looked on provincial tittle-tattle 
with disgust. If some one chanced to call who did not belong 
to the inner cézac/e, the conversation underwent an immediate 
change, and with one accord all present spoke of indifferent 
things. 

So the Hétel Graslin became a sort of oasis in the desert 
where a chosen few sought relief in each other’s society fom 
the tedium of provincial life, a house where officials might 
discuss politics and speak their minds without fear of their 
opinions being reported, where all things worthy of mockery 
were fair game for wit and laughter, where every one laid aside 
his professional uniform to give his natural character free play, 


VERONIQUE. 49 


In the beginning of that year 1828, Mme. Graslin, whose 
girlhood had been spent in the most complete obscurity, who 
had been pronounced to be plain and stupid and a complete 
nullity, was now looked upon as the most important person 
in the town, and the most conspicuous woman in society. 
No one called upon her in the morning, for her benevolence 
and her punctuality in the performance of her duties of relig- 
ion were well known. She almost invariably went to the first 
mass, returning in time for her husband’s early breakfast. He 
was the most unpunctual of men, but she always sat with him, 
for Graslin had learned to expect this little attention from his 
wife. As for Graslin, he never let slip an opportunity of 
praising her; he thought her perfection. She never asked 
him for money ; he was free to pile up silver crown on silver 
crown, and to expand his field of operations. He had opened 
an account with the firm of Brézac; he had set sail upon a 
commercial sea, and the horizon was gradually widening out 
before him ; his over-stimulated interest, intent upon the great 
events of the green table called very superficially Speculation, 
kept him perpetually in the cold, frenzied intoxication of the 
gambler. 

During this happy year, and indeed until the beginning 
of the year 1829, Mme. Graslin’s friends watched a strange 
change passing in her, under their eyes; her beauty became 
really extraordinary, but the reasons of the change were never 
discovered. Her eyes seemed to be bathed in a soft liquid 
light, full of tenderness, the blue iris widened like an expand-_ 
ing flower as the dark pupils contracted. Memories and happy 
thoughts seemed to light up her brow, which grew whiter, 
like some ridge of snow in the dawn, her features seemed to 
regain their purity of outline in some refining fire within. 
Her face lost the feverish brown color which threatens inflam- 
mation of the liver, the malady of vigorous temperaments of 
troubled minds and thwarted affections. Her temples grew 
adorably fresh and youthful. Frequently her friends saw 

4 


50 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


glimpses of the divinely fair face which a Raphael might have 
painted, the face which disease had covered with an ugly film, 
such as time spreads over the canvas of the great master. 
Her hands looked whiter, there was a delicate fulness in the 
rounded curves of her shoulders, and her quick dainty move- 
ments displayed to the very full the lissome grace of her 
form. ; 

The women said that she was in love with M. de Granville, 
who, for that matter, paid assiduous court to her, though 
Véronique raised between them the barriers of a pious resist- 
ance. The deputy public prosecutor professed a respectful 
admiration for her which did not impose upon frequenters of 
her house. Clearer-sighted observers attributed to a different 
cause this change, which made Véronique still more charming 
to her friends. Any woman, however devout, could not but 
feel in her inmost soul that it was sweet to be so courted, to 
know the satisfaction of living in a congenial atmosphere, the 
delight of exchanging ideas (so great a relief in a tedious life), 
the pleasure of the society of well-read and agreeable men, 
and of sincere friendships, which grew day by day. It needed, 
perhaps, an observer still more profound, more acute, or more 
suspicious than any of those who came to the Hétel Graslin to 
divine the untamed greatness, the strength of the woman of 
the people pent up in the depths of Véronique’s nature. Now 
and again they might surprise her in a torpid mood, overcast 
by gloomy or merely pensive musings, but all her friends 
knew that she carried many troubles in her heart ; that, doubt- 
less, in the morning she had been initiated into many sorrows, 
that she penetrated into dark places where vice is appalling 
by reason of its unblushing front. Not seldom, indeed, the 
Vicomte, soon promoted to be advocate-general, scolded her 
for some piece of blind benevolence discovered by him in the 
course of his investigations. Justice complained that Charity 
had paved the way to the police court. 

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VERONIQUE. 51 


Grossetéte had asked on this, as he took her hand in his. ‘‘I 
will share the guilt of your benefactions.”’ 

‘¢Tt is impossible to make everybody rich,’’ she answered, 
heaving a sigh. 

An event occurred at the beginning of this year which was 
to change the whole current of Véronique’s inner life, as well 
as the wonderful expression of her face, which henceforward 
became a portrait infinitely more interesting to a painter’s 
eyes. 

Graslin grew rather fidgety about his health, and to his 
wife’s great despair left his ground-floor quarters and returned 
to her apartment to be tended. Soon afterwards Mme. Gras- 
lin’s condition became a matter of town gossip ; she was about 
to become a mother. Her evident sadness, mingled with joy, 
filled her friends’ thoughts; they then divined that, in spite 
of her virtues, she was happiest when she lived apart from her 
husband. Perhaps she had had hopes for better things since 
the day when the Vicomte de Granville had declined to marry 
the richest heiress in Limousin, and still continued to pay 
court to her. Ever since that event the profound politicians 
who exercise the censorship of sentiments, and settle other 
people’s business in the intervals of whist, had suspected the 
lawyer and young Mme. Graslin of basing hopes of their own 
on the banker’s failing health—hopes which were brought to 
nothing by this unexpected development. It was a time in 
Véronique’s life when deep distress of mind was added to the 
apprehensions of a first confinement, always more perilous, it 
is said, when a woman is past her first youth, but all through 
those days her friends showed themselves more thoughtful for 
her ; there was not one of them but made her feel in innumer- 
able small ways what warmth there was in these friendships of 
hers, and how solid they had become. 


Il. 
TASCHERON. 


It was in the same year that Limoges witnessed the terrible 
spectacle and strange tragedy of the Tascheron case, in which 
the young Vicomte de Granville displayed the talents which 
procured him the appointment of public prosecutor at a later 
day. 

An old man living in a lonely house on the outskirts of the 
Faubourg Saint-Etienne was murdered. A large orchard 
isolates the dwelling on the side of the town, on the other there 
isa pleasure garden, with a row of unused hothouses at the 
bottom of it; then follow the open fields. ‘The bank of the , 
Vienne in this place rises up very steeply from the river, the 
little front garden slopes down to this embankment, and is 
bounded by a low wall surmounted by an open fence. 
Square stone posts are set along it at even distances, but the 
painted wooden railings are there more by way of ornament 
than as a protection to the property. 

The old man, Pingret by name, a notorious miser, lived 
quite alone save for a servant, a countrywoman whom he 
employed inthe garden. He trained his espaliers and pruned 
his fruit trees himself, gathering his crops and selling them 
in the town, and excelled in growing early vegetables for the 
market. The old man’s niece and sole heiress, who had 
married a M. des Vanneaulx, a man of small independent 
means, and lived in Limoges, had many a time implored her 
uncle to keep a man as protection to the place, pointing 
out to him that he would be able to grow more garden 
produce in several borders planted with standard fruit trees 
beneath which he now sowed millet and the like; but it was 
of no use, the old man would not hear of it. This contra- 
diction in a miser gave rise to all sorts of conjectures in the 
houses where the Vanneaulx spent their evenings. ‘The 


52) 


TASCHERON. 53 


most divergent opinions had more than once divided parties 
at boston. Some knowing folk came to the conclusion that 
there was a treasure hidden under the growing luzern. 

“<Tf I were in Mme. des Vanneaulx’s place,’’ remarked one 
pleasant gentleman, ‘‘I would not worry my uncle, I know. 
If somebody murders him, well and good; somebody will 
murder him. I should come in for the property.” 

Mme. des Vanneaulx, however, thought differently. As a 
manager at the Théatre-Italien implores the tenor who ‘‘ draws’”’ 
a full house to be very careful to wrap up his throat, and gives 
him his cloak when the singer has forgotten his overcoat, so 
did Mme. des Vanneaulx try to watch over her relative. She 
had offered little Pingret a magnificent yard dog, but the old 
man sent the animal back again by Jeanne Malassis his 
servant. , 

** Your uncle has no mind to have one more mouth to feed 
up at our place,’’ said the handmaid to Mme. des Vanneaulx. — 

The event proved that his niece’s fears had been but too 
well founded. Pingret was murdered one dark night in the 
patch of luzern, whither he had gone, no doubt, to add a few 
louis toa pot full of gold. The servant, awakened by the 
sounds of the struggle, had the courage to go to the old man’s 
assistance, and the murderer found himself compelled to kill 
her also, lest she should bear witness against him. This cal- 
culation of probable risks, which nearly always prompts a 
man guilty of one murder to add another to his account, is 
one unfortunate result of the capital sentence which he beholds 
looming in the distance. 

The double crime was accompanied by strange circum- 
stances, which told as strongly for the defense as for the prose- 
cution. When the neighbors had seen nothing of Pingret nor 
of the servant for the whole morning; when, as they came 
and went, they looked through the wooden railings and saw 
that the doors and windows (contrary to wont) were still 
barred and fastened, the thing began to be bruited abroad 


54 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


through the Faubourg Saint-Etienne, till it reached Mme. des 
Vanneaulx in the Rue des Cloches. Mme. des Vanneaulx, 
whose mind always ran on horrors, sent for the police, and the 
doors were broken open. In the four patches of luzern there 
were four gaping holes in the earth, surrounded by rubbish, 
and strewn with broken shards of the pots which had been 
full of gold the night before. In two of the holes, which 
had been partly filled up, they found the bodies of old Pingret 
and Jeanne Malassis, buried in their clothes; she, poor thing, 
had run out barefooted in her night-dress. 

While the public prosecutor, the commissary, and the exam- 
ining magistrate took down all these particulars, the unlucky 
des Vanneaulx collected the scraps of broken pottery, put 
them together, and calculated the amount the jars should have 
held. The authorities, perceiving the common-sense of this 
proceeding, estimated the stolen treasure at a thousand pieces 
per pot; but what was the value of those coins? Had they 
been forty or forty-eight franc-pieces, twenty-four or twenty 
francs? Every creature in Limoges who had expectations 
felt for the des Vanneaulx in this trying situation. The sight 
of those fragments of crockery-ware which once held gold 
gave a lively stimulus to Limousin imaginations. As for little 
Pingret, who often came to sell his vegetables in the market 
himself, who lived on bread and onions, and did not spend 
three hundred francs in a year, who never did anybody a good 
turn, nor any harm either, no one regretted him in the least— 
he had never done a pennyworth of good to the Faubourg. 
Saint-Etienne. As for Jeanne Malassis, her heroism was con- 
sidered to be ill-timed ; the old man, if he had lived, would 
have grudged her reward ; altogether, her admirers were few 
compared with the number of those who remarked, ‘‘ I should 
have slept soundly in her place, I know!”’ 


Then the curious and the next-of-kin were made aware of 
the inconsistencies of certain misers. The police, when they 


TASCHERON. 55 


came to draw up the report, could find neither pen nor ink in 
the bare, cold, dismal, tumble-down house. The little old 
man’s horror of expense was glaringly evident: in the great 
holes in the roof, which let in rain and snow as well as light ; 
in the moss-covered cracks which rent the walls; in the rotting 
doors ready to drop from their hinges at the least shock ; in the 
unoiled paper which did duty as glass in the windows. There 
was not a window curtain in the house, not a looking-glass 
over the mantel-shelves; the grates were chiefly remarkable 
for the absence of fire-irons and the accumulation of damp 
soot, a sort of varnish over the handful of sticks or the log 
of wood which lay on the hearth. And as to the furniture— 
a few crippled chairs and maimed armchairs, two beds, hard 
and attenuated (Time had adorned old Pingret’s bed-curtains 
with open-work embroidery of a bold design), one or two 
cracked pots and riveted plates, a worm-eaten bureau, where 
the old man used to keep his garden seeds, household linen 
thick with darns and patches—the furniture, in short, con- 
sisted of a mass of rags, which had only a sort of life kept in 
them by the spirit of their owner, and now that he was gone, 
they dropped to pieces and crumbled to powder. At tne 
first touch of the brutal hands of the police officers and 
infuriated next-of-kin they evaporated, heaven knows how, 
and came to nameless. ruin and an indefinable end. They 
were not. Before the terrors of a public auction they vanished 
away. 

For a long time the greater part of the inhabitants of the 
capital of Limousin continued to take an interest in the hard 
case of the worthy des Vanneaulx, who had two children ; 
but as soon as justice appeared to have discovered the perpe- 
trator of the crime, this person absorbed all their attention, 
he became the hero of the day, and the des Vanneaulx were 
relegated to the obscurity of the background. 

Towards the end of the month of March, Mme. Graslin 
had already felt the discomforts incidental to her condition, 


56 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


which could no longer be concealed. By that time inquiries 
were being made into the crime committed in the Faubourg 
Saint-Etienne, but the murderer was still at large. Véronique 
received visitors in her bedroom, whither her friends came for 
their game of whist. A few days later Mme. Graslin kept 
her room altogether. More than once already she had been 
seized with the unaccountable fancies commonly attributed to 
women with child. Her mother came almost every day to 
see her; the two spent whole hours in each other’s society. 

It was nine o’clock. The card-tables were neglected, every 
one was talking about the murder and the des Vanneaulx, 
when the Vicomte de Granville came in. 

‘*We have caught the man who murdered old Pingret!”’ 
he cried in high glee. : 

‘** And who is it?’’ The question came from all sides. 

‘‘One of the workmen in a porcelain factory, a man of 
exemplary conduct, and in a fair way to make his fortune. 
He is one of your husband’s old workmen,’’ he added, turn- 
ing to Mme. Graslin. 

‘¢ Who is it ?’’ Véronique asked faintly. 

‘‘ Jean-Francois Tascheron.”’ 

‘‘The unfortunate man!’ she exclaimed. ‘‘ Yes. I re- 
member seeing him several times. My poor father recom- 
mended him to me as a valuable hand & 

‘*He left the place before Sauviat died,’’ remarked old 
Mme. Sauviat; ‘‘he went over to the MM. Philippart to 
better himself. But is my daughter well enough to hear 
about this?’’ she added, looking at Mme. Graslin, who was 
as white as the sheets. 





After that evening old Mother Sauviat left her house, and 
in spite of her seventy years, installed herself as her daugh- 
ter’s nurse. She did not leave Véronique’s room. No matter 
at what hour Mme. Graslin’s friends called to see her, they 
found the old mother sitting heroically at her post by the bed- 


TASCHERON. ieee 


side, busied with her eternal knitting, brooding over her 
Véronique as in the days of the smallpox, answering for her 
child, and sometimes denying her to visitors. The love 
between the mother and daughter was so well known in 
Limoges that people took the old woman’s ways as a matter 
of course. 

A few days later, when the Vicomte de Granville began to 
give some of the details of the Tascheron case, in which the 
whole town took an eager interest, thinking to interest the 
invalid, La Sauviat cut him short by asking if he meant to 
give Mme. Graslin bad dreams again, but Véronique begged 
M. de Granville to go on, fixing her eyes on his face. So it 
fell out that Mme. Graslin’s friends heard in her house the 
result of the preliminary examination, soon afterwards made 
public, at first-hand from the avocat général. Here, in a con- 
densed form, is the substance of the indictment which was 
being drawn up by the prosecution : 


Jean-Francois Tascheron was the son of a small farmer 
burdened with a large family, who lived in the township 
of Montégnac. Twenty years before the perpetration of 
this crime, whose memory still lingers in Limousin, Canton 
Montégnac bore a notoriously bad character. It was alleged 
in the criminal court of Limoges that fifty out of every 
hundred convictions came from the Montégnac district. 
Since 1816, two years after the arrival of the new curé, 
M. Bonnet, Montégnac lost its old reputation, and no longer 
sent up its contingent to the assizes. The change was gen- 
erally set down to M. Bonnet’s influence in the commune, 
which had once been a perfect hotbed of bad characters who 
gave trouble in all the country round about. Jean-Francois 
Tascheron’s crime suddenly restored Montégnac to its former 
unenviable pre-eminence. It happened, singularly enough, 
that the Tascherons had been almost the only family in the 


countryside which had not departed from the old exemplary 
\ 


58 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


traditions and religious habits now fast dying out in country 
places. In them the curé had found a moral support and 
basis of operations, and naturally he thought a great deal of 
them. The whole family.were hard workers, remarkable for 
their honesty and the strong affection that bound them to each 
other; Jean-Francois Tascheron had had none but good ex- 
amples set before him at home. A praiseworthy ambition had 
brought him to Limoges. He meant to make a little fortune 
honestly by a handicraft, and left the township, to the regret 
of his relations and friends, who were very much attached to 
him. 

His conduct during his two years of apprenticeship was 
admirable ; apparently no irregularity in his life had foreshad- 
owed the hideous crime for which he forfeited his life. The 
leisure which other workmen wasted in the wineshop and 
debauches, Tascheron spent in study. 

Justice in the provinces has plenty of time on her hands, 
but the most minute investigation threw no light whatever on 
the secrets of his existence. The landlady of Jean Francois’ 
humble lodging, skillfully questioned, said that she had never 
had such a steady young man asa lodger. He was pleasant- 
spoken and good-tempered, almost gay, as you might say. 
About a year ago a change seemed to come over him. He 
would stop out all night several times a month, and ojten for 
several nights at atime. She did not know whereabouts in 
the town he spent those nights. Still, she had sometimes 
thought, judging by the mud on his boots, that her lodger 
had been somewhere out in the country. He used to wear 
pumps, too, instead of hobnailed boots, although he was 
going out of the town, and before he went he used to shave 
and scent himself, and put on clean clothes. 

The examining magistrate carried his investigation to such 
a length that inquiries were made in houses of ill-fame and 
among licensed prostitutes, but no one knew anything of 
Jean-Francois Tascheron; other inquiries made among the 


TASCHERON. 89 


class of factory operatives and shop-girls met with no better 
success ; none of those whose conduct was light had any rela- 
tions with the accused. 

A crime without any motive whatever is inconceivable, 
especially when the criminal’s bent was apparently towards 
self-improvement, while his ambitions argued higher ideals 
and sense superior to that of other workmen. ‘The whole 
criminal department, like the examining magistrate, were fain 
to find a motive for the murder in a passion for play on Tas- 
cheron’s part ; but after minute investigation, it was proved 
that the accused had never gambled in his life. 

_ From the very first Jean-Francois took refuge in a system 
of denial which could not but break down in the face of 
circumstantial evidence when his case should come before a 
jury ; but his manner of defending himself suggested the 
intervention of some person well acquainted with the law, or 
gifted with no ordinary intelligence. The evidence of his 
guilt, as in most similar cases, was at once unconvincing and 
yet too strong to be set aside. The principal points which 
told against Tascheron were four—his absence from home on 
the night of the murder (he would not say where he spent 
that night, and scorned to invent an a/éi); a shred of his 
blouse, torn without his knowledge during the struggle with 
the poor servant-girl, and blown by the wind into the tree 
where it was found; the fact that he had been seen hanging 
about the house that evening by people in the suburb, who 
would not have remembered this but for the crime which 
followed ; and, lastly, a false key which he had made to fit the 
lock of the garden-gate, which was entered trom the fields. 
It had been hidden rather ingeniously in one of the holes, 
some two feet below the surface. M. des Vanneaulx had 
come upon it while digging to see whether by chance there 
might be a second hoard beneath the first. The police suc- 
ceeded in finding out the man who supplied the steel, the 
vise, and the key-file. This had been their first clue, it put 


60 THE COUNTRY PARSON, 


them on Tascheron’s track, and finally they arrested him on 
the limits of the department in a woods where he was waiting 
for the diligence. An hour later, and he would have been on 
his way to America. Moreover, in spite of the care with 
which the footprints had been erased in the trampled earth 
and on the muddy road, the rural policeman had found the 
marks of thin shoes, clear and unmistakable, in the soil. 
Tascheron’s lodgings were searched, and a pair of pumps 
were found which exactly corresponded with the impress, a 
fatal coincidence which confirmed the curious observations 
of his landlady. 

Then the criminal investigation department saw another 
influence at work in the crime, and a second and perhaps a 
prime mover in the case. Tascheron must have had an 
accomplice, if only for the reason that it was impossible for 
one man to take away such a weight of coin. No man, how- 
ever strong, could carry twenty-five thousand francs in gold 
very far. If each of the pots had held so much, he must 
have made four journeys. Now, a singular accident deter- 
mined the very hour when the deed was done. Jeanne 
Malassis, springing out of bed in terror at her master’s 
shrieks, had overturned the table on which her watch lay 
(the one present which the miser had made her in five years). 
The fall had broken the mainspring, and stopped the hands 
at two o’clock. 

In mid-March, the time of the murder, the sun rises be- 
tween five and six in the morning. So on the hypothesis 
traced out by the police and the department, it was clearly 
impossible that Tascheron should have carried off the money 
unaided and alone, even for a short distance, in the time. 
The evident pains which the man had taken to erase other 
footprints to the neglect of his own, also indicated an un- 
known assistant. 

Justice, driven to invent some reason for the crime, decided 
on a frantic passion for some woman, and, as she was not to 


TASCHERON. 61 


be found among the lower classes, forensic sagacity looked 
higher. 

Could it be some woman of the bourgeoisie who, feeling 
sure of the discretion of a lover of so puritanical a cut, had 
read with him the opening chapters of a romance which had 
ended in this ugly tragedy? ‘There were circumstances in 
the case which almost bore out this theory. The old man 
had been killed by blows from a spade. The murder, it 
seemed, was the result of chance, a sudden fortuitous develop- 
ment, and not a part of a deliberate plan. The two lovers 
_ might, perhaps, have concerted the theft, but not the second 
crime. Then Tascheron the lover and Pingret the miser had 
crossed each other’s paths, and in the thick darkness of 
night two inexorable passions met on the same spot, both 
attracted thither by gold. 

Justice devised a new plan for obtaining light on these dark 
facts. Jean-Francois had a favorite sister; her they arrested 
and examined privately, hoping in this way to come bya 
knowledge of the mysteries of her brother’s private life. 
Denise Tascheron denied all knowledge of his affairs; pru- 
dence dictating a system of negative answers which led her 
‘questioners to suspect that she really knew the reasons of the 
crime. Denise Tascheron, as a matter of fact, knew nothing 
whatever about it, but for the rest of her days she was to be 
under a cloud in consequence of her detention. 

The accused showed a spirit very unusual in a workingman. 
He was too clever for the cleverest ‘‘sheep of the prisons’? — 
with whom he came in contact—though he did not discover 
that he had to do with a spy. The keener intelligences 
among the magistracy saw in him a murderer through passion, 
not through necessity, like the common herd of criminals 
who pass by way of the petty sessions and the hulks to a 
capital charge. He was shrewdly plied with questions put 
with this idea; but the man’s wonderful discretion left the 
magistrates much where they were before. The romantic but 


62 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


plausible theory of a passion for a woman of higher rank, once 
admitted, insidious questions were suddenly asked more than 
once; but Jean-Francois discretion issued victorious from all 
the mental tortures which the ingenuity of an examining mag- 
istrate could inflict. 

As a final expedient, Tascheron was told that the person 
for whom he had committed the crime had been discovered 
and arrested ; but his face underwent no change, he contented 
himself with the ironical retort, ‘‘I should be very glad to see 
that person.”’ 

When these details became known, there were plenty of 
people who shared the magistrate’s suspicions, confirmed to 
all appearance by the behavior of the accused, who main- 
tained the silence of a savage. An all-absorbing interest 
attached to a young man who had come to be a problem. 
Every one will understand how the public curiosity was stimu- 
lated by the facts of the case, and how eagerly reports of the 
examination were followed ; for, in spite of all the probings 
of the police, the case for the prosecution remained on the 
brink of a mystery, which the authorities did not dare to 
penetrate, beset with dangers as it was. In some cases a half- 
certainty is not enough for the magistracy. So it was hoped 
that the buried truth would arise and come to light at the 
great day of the assizes, an occasion when criminals fre- 
quently lose their heads. 

It happened that M. Graslin was on the jury empaneled for 
the occasion, and Véronique could not but hear through him 
or through M. de Granville the whole story of a trial which 
kept Limousin, and indeed all France, in excitement for a 
fortnight. The behavior of the prisoner at the bar justified 
the romances founded on the conjectures of justice which 
were current in the town; more than once his eyes were 
turned searchingly on the bevy of women privileged to enjoy 
the spectacle of a sensational drama _in real life. Every time 
that the clear impenetrable gaze was turned on the fashionable 


TASCHE RON. 63 


audience, it produced a flutter of consternation, so greatly 
did every woman. fear lest she might seem to inquisitive eyes 
in the court to be the prisoner’s partner in guilt. 

The useless efforts of the criminal investigation department 
were then made public, and Limoges was informed of the pre- 
cautions taken by the accused to ensure the complete success 
of his crime. 

Some months before that fatal night, Jean-Francois had pro- 
cured a passport for North America. Clearly he had meant 
to leave France. Clearly, therefore, the woman in the case 
must be married ; for there was, of course, no object to be 
gained by eloping with a young girl. Perhaps it was a desire 
to maintain the fair unknown in luxury which had prompted 
the crime ; but, on the other hand, a search through the regis- 
ters of the administration had discovered that no passport for 
that country had been made out in a woman’s name. The 
police had even investigated the registers in Paris as well as 
those of the neighboring perfectures, but fruitlessly. 

As the case proceeded, every least detail brought to light 
revealed profound forethought on the part of a man of no 
ordinary intelligence. While the most virtuous ladies of 
Limousin explained the sufficiently inexplicable use of even- 
ing shoes for a country excursion on muddy roads and heavy 
soil, by the plea that it was necessary to spy upon old Pingret ; 
the least coxcombically given of men were delighted to point 
out how eminently a pair of thin pumps favored noiseless 
movements about a house, scaling windows, and stealing along 
corridors. 

Evidently Jean-Frangois Tascheron and his mistress, a 
young, romantic, and beautiful woman (for every one drew 
a superb portrait of the lady), had contemplated forgery, and 
the words ‘‘ and wife’’ were to be filled in after his name on 
the passport. 

Card-parties were broken up during these evenings by mali- 
cious conjectures and comments. People began to cast about 


64 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


for the names of women who went to Paris during March, 
1829; or of others who might be supposed to have made pre- 
parations openly or secretly for flight. The trial supplied 
Limoges with a second Fualdés case, with an unknown Mme, 
Manson by way of improvement on the first. Never, indeed, 
was any country town so puzzled as Limoges after the court 
rose each day. People’s very dreams turned on the trial. 
Everything that transpired raised the accused in their eyes; 
his answers, skillfully turned over and over, expanded and 
edited, supplied a theme for endless argument. One of the 
jury asked, for instance, why Tascheron had taken a passport 
for America, to which the prisoner replied that he meant to 
open a porcelain factory there. In this way he screened his 
accomplice without quitting his line of defense, and supplied 
conjecture with a plausible and sufficient motive for the crime 
in this ambition of his. 

In the thick of these disputes, it was impossible that Véron- 
ique’s friends should not also try to account for Tascheron’s 
close reserve. One evening she seemed better than usual. 
The doctor had prescribed exercise; and that very morning 
Véronique, leaning on her mother’s arm, had walked out as 
far as Mme. Sauviat’s cottage, and rested there a while. When 
she came home again, she tried to sit up until her husband 
returned, but Graslin was late, and did not come back from 
the court till eight o’clock; his wife waited on him at din- 
ner after her usual custom, and in this way she could not 
help but hear the discussion between her husband and his 
friends. 

‘¢ We should have known more about this if my poor father 
were still alive,’’ said Véronique, ‘‘ or perhaps the man would 
not have committed the crime But I notice that you 
have all of you taken one strange notion into your heads! 
You will have it that there is a woman at the bottom of this 
business (as far as that goes I myself am of your opinion), but 
why do you think that she is a married woman? Why cannot 





a ee a ee ee ee 
« pies: On 


TASCHERON. 65 


he have loved some girl whose father and mother refused to 
listen to him?”’ 

*« Sooner or later a young girl might have been legitimately 
his,”’ returned M. de Granville. ‘‘ Tascheron is not wanting 
in patience; he would have had time to make an independ- 
ence honestly ; he could have waited until the girl was old 
enough to marry without her parents’ consent.’’ 

**T did not know that such a marriage was possible,’’ said 
Mme. Graslin. ‘‘ Then how is it that no one had the least 
suspicion of it, here in a place where everybody knows the 
affairs of everybody else, and sees all that goes on in his 
neighbor’s house? Two people cannot fall in love without 
at any rate seeing each other or being seen of each other! 
What do you lawyers think?’’ she continued, looking the 
avocat général full in the eyes. 

**We all think that the woman must be the wife of some 
tradesman, a man in business.’’ 

‘7 am of a totally opposite opinion,’’ said Mme. Graslin. 
«¢ That kind of woman has not sentiments sufficiently lofty,”’ 
a retort which drew all eyes upon her. Every one waited for 
the explanation of the paradox. 

“* At night,’’ she said, ‘‘when I do not sleep, or when I 
lie in bed in the daytime, I cannot help thinking over this 
mysterious business, and I believe I can guess Tascheron’s 
motives. These are my reasons for thinking that it is a girl, 
and nota woman in the case. A married woman has other 
interests, if not other feelings; she has a divided heart in 
her, she cannot rise to the full height of the exaltation in- 
spired by a love so passionate as this. She must never have 
borne a child if she is to conceive a love in which maternal 
instincts are blended with those which spring from desire. 
It is quite clear that some woman who wished to be a sustain- 
ing power to him has loved this man. That unknown woman | 
must have brought to her love the genius which inspires artists 
and poets, aye, and women also, but in another form, for it 

5 


66 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


is a woman’s destiny to create, not things, but men. Our 
creations are our children, our children are our pictures, our 
books and statues. Are we not artists when we shape their 
lives from the first? So Iam sure that if she is not a girl, 
she is not a mother ; I would stake my head upon it. Law-. 
yers should have a woman’s instinct to apprehend the infinite 
subtle touches which continually escape them in so many 
cases. 

«If I had been your substitute,’’ she continued, turning 
to M. de Granville, ‘‘we should have discovered the guilty 
woman, always supposing that she is guilty. I think, with 
M. |’Abbé Dutheil, that the two lovers had planned to go to 
America, and to live there on poor Pingret’s money, as they 
had none of their own. The theft, of course, led to the 
murder, the usual fatal consequence of the fear of detec- 
tion and death. And it would be worthy of you,’’ she 
added, with a suppliant glance at the young lawyer, “to 
withdraw the charge of malice aforethought ; you would save 
the miserable man’s life. He isso great in spite of his crime, 
that he would perhaps expiate his sins by some magnificent 
repentance. The works of repentance should be taken into 
account in the deliberations of justice. In these days there 
are no better ways of atoning an offense than by the loss of 
a head, or by founding, as in olden times, a Milan cathe- 
dral ?”’ 

‘« Madame, your ideas are sublime,’’ returned the lawyer ; 
‘but if the averment of malice aforethought were withdrawn, 
Tascheron would still be tried for his life ; and it is a case of 
aggravated theft, it was committed at night, the walls were 
scaled, the premises broken into——’’ 

‘¢ Then, do you think he will be condemned ?’’ she asked, 
lowering her eyelids. 

“*T do not doubt it. The prosecution has the best of it.” 

A light shudder ran through Mme. Graslin, Her dress 
rustled, 


TASCHERON. 67 


“‘I feel cold,” she said. 

She took her mother’s arm and went to bed. 

‘She is much better to-day,’’ said her friends. 

The next morning Véronique was at death’s door. She 
smiled at her doctor’s surprise at finding her in an almost 
dying state. 

**« Did I not tell you that the walk would do me no good ?’”’ 
she said. 


Ever since the opening of the trial there had been no trace 
of either swagger or hypocrisy in Tascheron’s attitude. The 
doctor, always with a view to diverting his patient’s mind, 
tried to explain this attitude out of which the counsel for the 
defense made capital for his client. The counsel’s cleverness, 
the doctor opined, had dazzled the accused, who imagined 
that he should escape the capital sentence. Now and then an 
expression crossed his face which spoke plainly of hopes of 
some coming happiness greater than mere acquittal or reprieve. 
The whole previous life of this man of twenty-three was such 
a flat contradiction to the deeds which brought it to a close 
that his champions put forward his behavior as a conclusive 
argument. In fact, the clues spun by the police into a stout 
hypothesis fit to hang a man dwindled so pitiably when woven 
into the romance of the defense, that the prisoner’s counsel 
fought for his client’s life with some prospect of success. To 
save him he shifted the ground of the combat, and fought the 
battle out on the question of malice aforethought. It was 
admitted, without prejudice, that the robbery had been 
planned beforehand, but contended that the double murder 
had been the result of an unexpected resistance in both cases. 
The issue looked doubtful ; neither side had made good their 
case. 

When the doctor went, the avocat général came in as usual 
to see Véronique before he went to the court. 

**T have read the counsel’s speeches yesterday,’’ she told 


68 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


him. ‘To-day the other side will reply. I am so very much 
interested in the prisoner that I should like him to be saved. 
Could you not forego a triumph for once in your life? Let 
the counsel for the defense gain the day. Come, make me a 
present of this life, and—perhaps—some day mine shall be 
yours There is a doubt after that fine speech of Tasche- 
ron’s counsel; well, then, why not " 

**Your voice is quivering ”’ said the Vicomte, almost 
taken by surprise. 

‘* Do. you know why?”’ she asked. ‘‘ My husband has just 
pointed out a coincidence—hideous for a sensitive nature like 
mine—a thing that is likely to cause me my death. You will 
give the order for his head to fall just about the time when 
my child will be born.’’ 

‘*Can I reform the Code ?’’ asked the public prosecutor. 

‘There, go! You do not know how to love!” she 
answered, and closed her eyes. 

She lay back on her pillow, and dismissed the lawyer with 
an imperative gesture. 

M. Graslin pleaded hard, but in vain, for an acquittal, ad- 
vancing an argument, first suggested to him by his wife, and 
taken up by two of his friends of the jury: ‘‘ If we spare the 
man’s life, the des Vanneaulx will recover Pingret’s money.” 
This irresistible argument told upon the jury, and divided 
them—seven for acquittal as against five. As they failed to 
agree, the president and assessors were obliged to add their 
suffrages, and they were on the side of the minority. Jean- 
Francois Tascheron was found guilty of murder. 

When sentence was passed, Tascheron burst into a blind 
fury, natural enough in a man full of strength and life, but 
seldom seen in court when it is an innocent man who is con- 
demned. It seemed to every one who saw it that the drama 
was not brought to an end by the sentence. So obstinate a 
struggle (as often happens in. such cases) gave rise to two 
diametrically opposite opinions as to the guilt of the central 











TASCHERON. 69 


figure in it. Some saw oppressed innocence in him, others a 
criminal justly punished. The Liberal party felt it incumbent 
upon them to believe in Tascheron’s innocence; it was not 
so much conviction on their part as a desire to annoy those in 
office. 

**What?’’ cried they. ‘‘Is a man to be condemned be- 
cause his foot happens to suit the size of a footmark? Be- 
cause, forsooth, he was not at his lodgings at the time? (As 
if any young fellow would not die sooner than compromise a 
woman!) Because he borrowed tools and bought steel P— 
(for it has not been proved that he made the key). Because 
some one finds a blue rag in a tree, where old Pingret very 
likely put it himself to scare the sparrows, and it happens to 
match a slit made in the blouse? Take a man’s life on such 
grounds as these! And, after all, Jean-Frangois has denied 
every charge, and the prosecution did not produce any wit- 
ness who had seen him commit the crime.’’ 

Then they fell to corroborating, amplifying, and paraphras- 
ing the speeches made by the prisoner’s counsel and his line 
of defense. As for Pingret; what was Pingret? A money- 
box which had been broken open; so said the freethinkers. 

A few so-called Progressives, who did not recognize the 
sacred laws of property (which the Saint-Simonians had 
already attacked in the abstract region of economical theory), 
went further still. 

“‘Old Pingret,’”’ said these, ‘‘ was the prime author of the 
crime. The man was robbing his country by hoarding the 
gold. What a lot of businesses that idle capital might have 
fertilized! He had thwarted industry; he was properly 
punished.’”’ 

As for the servant-girl, they were sorry for her; and 
Denise, who had baffled the ingenuity of the lawyers, the girl 
who never opened her mouth at the trial without long ponder- 
ing over what she meant to say, excited the keenest interest. 
She became a figure comparable, in another sense, with Jeanie 


70 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Deans, whom she resembled in charm of character, modesty, 
in her religious nature and personal comeliness. So Francois 
Tascheron still continued to excite the curiosity not merely of 
Limoges, but of the whole department. Some romantic 
women openly expressed their admiration of him. 

‘‘If there is a love for some woman about him at the 
bottom of all this,’’ said these ladies, ‘‘ the man is certainly 
no ordinary man. You will see that he will die bravely!”’ 

Would he confess? Would he keep silence? Bets were 
taken on the question. Since that outburst of rage with 
which he received his doom (an outburst which might have 
had a fatal ending for several persons in court but for the 
intervention of the police), the criminal threatened violence 
indiscriminately to all and sundry who came near him, and 
with the ferocity of a wild beast. The gaoler was obliged to 
put him in astrait waistcoat; for if he was dangerous to 
others, he seemed quite as likely to attempt his own life. 
Tascheron’s despair, thus restrained from all overt acts of 
violence, found a vent in convulsive struggles which frightened 
the warders, and in language which, in the middle ages, 
would have been set down to demoniacal possession. 

He was so young that women were moved to pity that a 
life so filled with an all-engrossing love should be cut off. 
Quite recently, and as if written for the occasion, Victor 
Hugo’s sombre elegy and vain plea for the abolition of the 
death-penalty (that support of the fabric of society) had 
appeared, and ‘* The Condemned’s Last Day’’ was the order 
of the day in all conversations. Then finally, above the 
boards of the assizes, set, as it were, upon a pedestal, rose the 
invisible mysterious figure of a woman, standing there with 
her feet dipped in blood ; condemned to suffer heart-rending 
anguish, yet outwardly to live in unbroken household peace. 
At her every one pointed the finger—and yet, they almost 
admired that Limousin Medea with the inscrutable brow and 
the heart of steel in her white breast. Perhaps she dwelt in 


TASCHERON. 71 


the home of this one or that, and was the sister, cousin, wife, 
or daughter of such an one. What a horror in their midst ! 
It is in the domain of the imagination, according to Napo- 
leon, that the power of the unknown is incalculably great. 

As for the des Vanneaulx’s hundred thousand francs, all the 
efforts of the police had not succeeded in recovering the 
money ; and the criminal’s continued silence was a strange 
defeat for the prosecution. M. de Granville (in the place of 
the public prosecutor then absent at the Chamber of Deputies) 
tried the commonplace stratagem of inducing the condemned 
man to believe that the penalty might be commuted if a full 
confession were made. But the lawyer had scarcely showed 
himself before the prisoner greeted him with furious yells, 
and epileptic contortions, and eyes ablaze with anger and 
regret that he could not kill his enemy. Justice could only 
hope that the Church might effect something at the last 
moment. Again and again the des Vanneaulx applied to the 
Abbé Pascal, the prison chaplain. The Abbé Pascal was not 
deficient in the peculiar quality which gains a priest a hearing 
from a prisoner. In the name of religion, he braved Tas- 
cheron’s transports of rage, and strove to utter a few words 
amidst the storms that convulsed that powerful nature. But 
the struggle between spiritual paternity and the tempest of 
uncontrolled passions was too much for poor Abbé Pascal ; he 
retired from it defeated and worn out. 

*¢ That is a man who has found his heaven here on earth,’’ 
the old priest murmured softly to himself. 

Then little Mme. des Vanneaulx thought of approaching the 
criminal herself, and took counsel of her friends. The Sieur 
des Vanneaulx talked of compromise. Being at his wits’ end, 
he even betook himself to M. de Granville, and suggested 
that he (M. de Granville) should intercede with the King for 
his uncle’s murderer if only, zf ondy, the murderer would hand 
over those hundred thousand francs to the proper persons. 
The avocat général retorted that the King’s majesty would not 


72 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


stoop to haggle with criminals. Then the des Vanneaulx 
tried Tascheron’s counsel, offering him twenty per cent. on 
the total amount as an inducement to recover it for them. 
This lawyer was the one creature whom Tascheron could see 
without flying into a fury; him, therefore, the next-of-kin 
empowered to offer ten per cent. to the murderer, to be paid 
over to the man’s family. But in spite of the mutilations 
which these beavers were prepared to make in their heritage, 
in spite of the lawyer’s eloquence, Tascheron continued obdu- 
rate. Then the des Vanneaulx, waxing wroth, anathematized 
the condemned man and called down curses upon his head. 

‘¢ He is not only a murderer, he has no sense of decency !”” 
cried they, in all seriousness, ignorant though they were of 
the famous Plaint of Fualdes. The Abbé Pascal had totally 
failed, the application for a reversal of judgment seemed likely 
to succeed no better, the man would go to the guillotine, and 
then all would be lost. 

‘¢ What good will our money be to him where he is going ?”’ 
they wailed. ‘‘ A murder you can understand, but to steal a 
thing that is of no use! The thing is inconceivable. What 
times we live in, to be sure, when people of quality take an 
interest in such a bandit! He does not deserve it.’’ ;, 

‘‘ He has very little sense of honor,’’ said Mme. des Van- 
neaulx. 

‘¢ Still, suppose that giving up the money should compro- 
mise his sweetheart! ’’ suggested an old maid. 

‘© We would keep his secret,’’ cried the Sieur des Vanneaulx. 

‘But then you would become accessories after the fact,’’ 
objected a lawyer. 

‘*Oh! the scamp!’’ This was the Sieur des Vanneaulx’s 
conclusion of the whole matter. 

The des Vanneaulx’s debates were reported with some 
amusement to Mme. Graslin by one of her circle, a very 
clever woman, a dreamer and idealist, for whom everything 
must be faultless. The speaker regretted the condemned 


TASCHERON. 73 


man’s fury ; she would have had him cold, calm, and dig- 
nified. 

«Do you not see,’’ said Véronique, ‘‘ that he is thrusting 
temptation aside and baffling their efforts. He is deliberately 
acting like a wild beast.’’ 

‘* Besides,’’ objected the Parisienne in exile, ‘‘ he is not a 
gentleman, he is only a common man.”’ 

“If he had been a gentleman, it would have been all over 
with that unknown woman long ago,’’ Mme. Graslin answered. 

These events, twisted and tortured in drawing-rooms and 
family circles, made to bear endless constructions, picked to 
pieces by the most expert tongues in the town, all contributed 
to invest the criminal with a painful interest, when, two 
months later, the appeal for mercy was rejected by the 
Supreme Court. . How would he bear himself in his last 
moments? He had boasted that he would make so desperate 
a fight for his life that it was impossible that he should lose it. 
Would he confess? Would his conduct belie his language? 
Which side would win their wagers? Are you going to be 
there? Are you not going? How are we to go? As a 
matter of fact, the distance from the prison of Limoges to the 
place of execution is very short, sparing the dreadful ordeal 
of a long transit to the prisoner, but also limiting the number 
of fashionable spectators. The prison is in the same building 
as the Palais de Justice, at the corner of the Rue du Palais 
and the Rue du Pont-Hérisson. The Rue du Palais is the direct 
continuation of the short Rue de Monte-a-Regret which leads 
to the Place d’Aine or des Arénes, where executions take place 
(hence, of course, its name). The way, as has been said, is 
very short, consequently there are not many houses along it, 
and but few windows. What persons of fashion would care 
to mingle with the crowd in the square on such an occasion ? 

But the execution expected from day to day was day after 
day put off, to the great astonishment of the town, and for the 
following reasons: The pious resignation of the greatest 


74 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


scoundrels on their way to death is a triumph reserved for the 
Church, and a spectacle which seldom fails to impress the 
crowd. Setting the interests of Christianity totally aside 
(although this is a principle never lost sight of by the Church), 
the condemned man’s repentance is too strong a testimony to 
the power of religion for the clergy not to feel that a failure 
on these conspicuous occasions 1s a heart-breaking misfortune. 
This feeling was aggravated in 1829, for party spirit ran high 
and poisoned everything, however small, which had any bear- 
ing on politics. The Liberals were in high glee at the pros- 
pect of a public collapse of the “ priestly party,’’ an epithet 
invented by Montlosier, a Royalist who went over to the 
Constitutionals and was carried by his new associates further 
than he intended. A party, in its corporate capacity, is 
guilty of disgraceful actions which in an individual would be 
infamous, and so it happens that when one man stands out 
conspicuous as the expression and incarnation of that party, 
in the eyes of the crowd he is apt to become a Robespierre, a 
Judge Jeffreys, a Laubardemont—a sort of altar of expiation 
to which others equally guilty attach ex vofos in secret. 

There was an understanding between the episcopal authori- 
ties and the police authorities, and still the execution was put 
off, partly to secure a triumph for religion, but quite as much 
for another reason—by the aid of religion justice hoped to 
arrive at the truth. The power of the public prosecutor, 
however, had its limits ; sooner or later the sentence must be 
carried out; and the very Liberals who insisted, for the sake 
of opposition, on Tascheron’s innocence, and had tried to 
upset the case, now began to grumble at the delay. Opposi- 
tion, when systematic, is apt to fall into inconsistencies ; for 
the point in question is not to be in the right, but to have a 
stone always ready to sling at authority. So towards the 
beginning of August, the hand of authority was forced by the 
clamor (often a chance sound echoed by empty heads) called 
public opinion. The execution was announced. 


TASCHERON. 76 


In this extremity the Abbé Dutheil took it upon himself to 
suggest a last resource to the bishop. One result of the suc- 
_cess of this plan will be the introduction of another actor in 
the judicial drama, the extraordinary personage who forms a 
connecting link between the different groups in it; the greatest 
of all figures in this Scene; the guide who should hereafter 
_ bring Mme. Graslin on a stage where her virtues were to shine 
forth with the brightest lustre; where she would exhibit a great 
and noble charity and act the part of a Christian and a min- 
istering angel. 

The bishop’s palace at Limoges stands on the hillside above 
the Vienne. The gardens, laid out in terraces supported by 
solidly-built walls, crowned by balustrades, descend stepwise, 
following the fall of the land to the river. The sloping ridge 
rises high enough to give the spectator on the opposite bank 
the impression that the Faubourg Saint-Etienne nestles at the 
foot of the lowest terrace of the bishop’s garden. Thence, 
as you walk in one direction, you look out across the river, 
and in the other along its course through the broad fertile 
landscape. When the Vienne has flowed westward past the 
palace gardens, it takes a sudden turn towards Limoges, skirt- 
ing the Faubourg Saint-Martial in a graceful curve. A little 
further, and beyond the suburb, it passes a charming country 
house called the Cluzeau. You can catch a glimpse of the 
walls from the nearest point of the nearest terrace, a trick of 
the perspective uniting them with the church towers of the 
suburb. Opposite the Cluzeau lies the island in the river, 
with its indented shores, its thickly growing poplars and forest 
trees, the island which Véronique in her girlhood called the 
Isle of France. Eastward, the low hills shut in the horizon 
like the walls of an amphitheatre. 

The charm of the situation and the rich simplicity of the 
architecture of the palace mark it out among the other build- 
ings of a town not conspicuously happy in the choice or 
employment of its building materials. The view from the 


76 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


gardens, which attracts travelers in search of the picturesque, 
had long been familiar to the Abbé Dutheil. He had brought 
M. de Grancour with him this evening, and went down from 
terrace to terrace, taking no heed of the sunset shedding its 
crimson and orange and purple over the balustrades along the 
steps, the houses on the suburb, and the waters of the river. 
He was looking for the bishop, who at that moment sat under 
the vines in a corner of the furthest terrace, taking his dessert, . 
and enjoying the charms of the evening at his ease. 

The long shadows cast by the poplars on the island fell like 
a bar across the river; the sunlight lit up their topmost crests, 
yellowed somewhat already, and turned the leaves to gold. 
The glow of the sunset, differently reflected from the different 
masses of green, composed a glorious harmony of subdued 
and softened color. A faint evening breeze stirring in the 
depths of the valley ruffled the surface of the Vienne into a 
broad sheet of golden ripples that brought out in contrast all 
the sober hues of the roofs in the Faubourg Saint-Etienne. 
The church towers and housetops of the Faubourg Saint- 
Martial were blended in the sunlight with the vine-stems of 
the trellis. The faint hum of the country town, half-hidden 
in the re-entering curve of the river, the softness of the air— 
all sights and sounds combined to steep the prelate in the 
calm recommended for the digestion by the authors of every 
treatise on that topic. Unconsciously the bishop fixed his 
eyes on the right bank of the river, on a spot where the length- 
ening shadows of the poplars in the island had reached the 
bank by the Faubourg Saint-Etienne, and darkened the walls 
of the garden close to the scene of the double murder of old 
Pingret and the servant; and just as his snug felicity of the 
moment was troubled by the difficulties which his vicars-general 
recalled to his recollection, the bishop’s expression grew 
inscrutable by reason of many thoughts. The two subordinates 
attributed his absence of mind to ennui; but, on the contrary, 
the bishop had just discovered in the sands of the Vienne the 


TASCHE RON. 77 


key to the puzzle, the clue which the des Vanneaulx and the 
police were seeking in vain. 

“* My lord,’’ began the Abbé de Grancour, as he came up 

to the bishop, ‘‘ everything has failed; we shall have the sor- 
row of seeing that unhappy Tascheron die in mortalsin. He 
will bellow the most awful blasphemies ; he will heap insults 
on poor Abbé Pascal ; he will spit on the crucifix, and deny 
everything, even hell-fire.’’ 
_ ‘He will frighten the people,’’ said the Abbé Dutheil. 
«The very scandal and horror of it will cover our defeat and 
our inability to prevent it. So, as I was saying to M. de 
Grancour as we came, may this scene drive more than one 
sinner back to the bosom of the Church.”’ 

His words seemed to trouble the bishop, who laid down the 
bunch of grapes which he was stripping on the table, wiped 
his fingers, and signed to his two vicars-general to be seated. 

** The Abbé Pascal has managed badly,”’ said he at last. 

“¢ He is quite ill after the last scene with the prisoner,’’ said 
the Abbé de Grancour. ‘‘If he had been well enough to 
come, we should have brought him with us to explain the 
. difficulties which put all the efforts which your lordship might 
command out of our power.’’ 

*¢ The condemned man begins to sing obscene songs at the 
top of his voice when he sees one of us; the noise drowns 
every word as soon as you try to make yourself heard,’’ said 
a young priest who was sitting beside the bishop. 

The young speaker leaned his right elbow on the table, his 
white hand drooped carelessly over the bunches of grapes as 
he selected the reddest berries, with the air of being perfectly 
at home. He had a charming face, and seemed to be either 
a table companion or a favorite with the bishop, and was, in 
fact, a favorite and the prelate’s table-companion. As the 
younger brother of the Baron de Rastignac he was connected 
with the bishop of Limoges by the ties of family relationship 
and affection. Considerations of fortune had induced the 


78 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


young man to enter the Church; and the bishop, aware of , 
this, had taken his young relative as his private secretary 
until such time as advancement might befall him; for the 
Abbé Gabriel bore a name which predestined him to the 
highest dignities of the Church. 

‘«Then have you been to see him, my son?’”’ asked the bishop. 

‘* Yes, mylord. As soon as I appeared, the miserable man 
poured out a torrent of the most disgusting language against 
you and me; his behavior made it impossible for a priest to 
stay with him. Will you permit me to offer you a piece of 
advice, my lord ?”’ 

‘‘Let us hear the wisdom which God sometimes puts into 
the mouth of babes,’’ said the bishop. 

‘‘Did he not cause Balaam’s ass to speak?’’ the young 
Abbé de Rastignac retorted quickly. 

‘‘ According to some commentators, the ass was not very 
well aware of what she was saying,’’ the bishop answered, 
laughing. 

Both the vicars-general smiled. In the first place, it was 
the bishop’s joke; and, in the second, it glanced lightly on 
this young abbé, of whom all the dignitaries and ambitious © 
churchmen grouped about the bishop were envious. 

‘‘My advice would be to beg M. de Granville to put off 
the execution for a few days yet. If the condemned man 
knew that he owed those days of grace to our intercession, he 
would perhaps make some show of listening to us, and if he 
listens i . 

‘‘ He will persist in his conduct when he sees what comes 
of it,’’ said the bishop, interrupting his favorite. ‘* Gentle- 
men,’’ he resumed after a moment’s pause, “is the town 
acquainted with these details ?’”’ 

‘‘Where will you find the house where they are not dis- 
cussed ?’’ answered the Abbé de Grancour. ‘‘ The condition 
of our good Abbé Pascal since his last interview is matter of 
common talk at this moment,”’ 





TASCHERON, 79 


«* When is Tascheron to be executed?’’ asked the bishop. 
“*To-morrow. It is market-day,’’ replied M. de Grancour. 
“‘Gentlemen, religion must not be vanquished,’’ cried the 
bishop. ‘‘The more attention is attracted to this affair, the 
more determined am I to secure a signal triumph. The 
Church is passing through a difficult crisis. Miracles are 
called for here among an industrial population, where sedition 
has spread itself and taken root far and wide; where religious 
and monarchical doctrines are regarded with a critical spirit ; 
where nothing is respected by a system of analysis derived 
from Protestantism by tne so-called Liberalism of to-day, 
which is free to take another name to-morrow. Go to M. de 
Granville, gentlemen, he is with us heart and soul; tell him 
that we ask for a few days’ respite. I will go to see the 
unhappy man.’”’ 

“‘Vou, my lord!’’ cried the Abbé de Rastignac. ‘‘ Will 
not too much be compromised if you fail? You should only 
go when success is assured.’’ 

“‘If my lord bishop will permit me to give my opinion,”’ 
said the Abbé Dutheil, ‘‘I think that I can suggest a means 
of securing the triumph of religion under these melancholy 
circumstances.”’ 

The bishop’s response was a somewhat cool sign of assent, 
which showed how low his vicar-general’s credit stood with 
him. 

«Tf any one has any ascendency over this rebellious soul, 
and may bring it to God, it is M. Bonnet, the curé of the 
village where the man was born,’’ the Abbé Dutheil went 
on. 

‘¢One of your protégés,’’ remarked the bishop. 

‘* My lord, M. Bonnet is one of those who recommend 
‘themselves by their militant virtues and evangelical labors.”’ 

This answer, so modest and simple, was received with a 
silence which would have disconcerted any one but the Abbé 
Dutheil, He had alluded to merits which had been over- 


80 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


looked, and the three who heard him chose to regard the 
words as one of the meek sarcasms, neatly put, impossible to 
resent, in which churchmen excel, accustomed as they are by 
their training to say the thing they mean without transgressing 
the severe rules laid down for them in the least particular. 
But it was nothing of the kind; the abbé never thought of 
himself. Then— 

‘¢T have heard of Saint Aristides for too long,’’ the bishop 
made answer, smiling. ‘‘ If I were to leave his light under a 
bushel, it would be injustice or prejudice on my part. Your 
Liberals cry up your M. Bonnet as if he were one of them- 
selves ; I mean to see this rural apostle and judge for myself. 
Go to the public prosecutor, gentlemen, and ask him in my 
name for a respite ; I will await his answer before despatching 
our well-beloved Abbé Gabriel to Montégnac to fetch the holy 
man for us. We will put his beatitude in the way of work- 
ing a miracle .. 

The Abbé Dutheil flushed red at these words from the 
prelate-noble, but he chose to disregard any slight that they 
might contain for him. Both vicars-general silently took 
their leave, and left the greatly perplexed bishop alone with his 
young friend. 

‘« The secrets of the confessional which we require lie buried 
there, no doubt,’’ said the bishop, pointing to the shadows of 
the poplars where they reached a lonely house half-way be- 
tween the island and the Faubourg Saint-Etienne. 

‘*So I have always thought,’’ Gabriel answered. ‘‘I am 
not a judge, and I do not care to play the spy; but if I had 
been the examining magistrate, I should know the name of 
the woman who is trembling now at every sound, at every 
word that is uttered, compelled all the while to wear a smooth, 
unclouded brow under pain of accompanying the condemned 
man to his death. Yet she has nothing to fear. I have seen 
the man—he will carry the secret of his passionate love to his 
grave.”’ 





TASCHERON. : 81 


' “Crafty young man!”’ said the bishop, pinching his secre- 
_tary’s ear, as he pointed out a'spot between the island in the 
river and the Faubourg Saint-Etienne, lit up by a last red ray 
from the sunset. The young priest’s eyes had been fixed on 
it as he spoke. ‘‘ Justice ought to have searched there; is it 
not so?”’ 

‘‘T went to see the criminal to try the effect of my guess 
upon him; but he is watched by spies, and, if I had spoken 
audibly, I might have compromised the woman for whom he 
is dying.”’ 

**Let us keep silent,’’ said the bishop. ‘‘ We are not con- 
cerned with man’s justice. One head will fall, and that is 
enough. Besides, sooner or later, the secret will return to 
the Church.’’ 

The perspicacity of the priest, fostered by the habit of medi- 
tation, is far keener than the insight of the lawyer and the 
detective. After all the preliminary investigations, after the 
legal inquiry, and the trial at the assizes, the bishop and his 
secretary, looking down from the height of the terrace, had 
in truth, by dint of contemplation, succeeded in discovering 
details as yet unknown. 

M. de Granville was playing his evening game of whist in 
Mme. Graslin’s house, and his visitors were obliged to wait 
for his return. It was near midnight before his decision was 
known at the palace, and by two o’clock in the morning the 
Abbé Gabriel started out for Montégnac in the bishop’s own 
traveling carriage, loaned to him for the occasion. The place 
is about nine leagues distant from Limoges ; it lies under the 
mountains of the Corréze, in that part of Limousin which 
borders on the department of the Creuse. All Limoges, when | 
the abbé left it, was in a ferment of excitement over the exe- 
cution promised for this day, an expectation destined to be 
balked once more. 


III. 
THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 


In priests and fanatics there is a certain tendency to insist 
upon the very utmost to which they are legally entitled where 
their interests are concerned. Is this a result of poverty? Is 
an egoism which favors the development of greed one of the 
consequences of isolation upon a man’s character? Or are 
shrewd business habits, as well as parsimony,-acquired by a 
course of management of charitable funds? Each tempera- 
ment suggests a different explanation, but the fact remains the 
same whether it lurks (as not seldom happens) beneath urbane 
good-humor, or (and equally often) is openly manifested ; and 
the difficulty of putting the hand in the pocket is evidently 
increasingly felt on a journey. 

Gabriel de Rastignac, the prettiest young gentleman who 
had bowed his head before the altar of the tabernacle for some 
time, only gave thirty sous to the postillions, and traveled 
slowly accordingly. The postillion tribe drive with all due 
respect a bishop who does but pay twice the amount demanded 
of ordinary mortals, but, at the same time, they are careful 
not to damage the episcopal equipage, for fear of getting them- 
selves into trouble. The abbé, traveling alone for the first 
time in his life, spoke mildly at each relay—.- 

‘¢ Just drive on a little faster, can’t you?’’ 

‘*'You can’t get the whip to work without a little palm 
oil,’’ an old postillion replied, and the young abbé, much 
mystified, fell back in a corner of the carriage. He amused 
himself by watching the landscape through which they were 
traveling, and walked up a hill now and again on the winding 
road from Bordeaux to Lyons. 

Five leagues beyond Limoges the country changes. You 
have left behind the charming low hills about the Vienne 

(82) 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 83 


and the fair meadow slopes of Limousin, which sometimes 
(and this particularly about Saint-Léonard) put you in mind 
of Switzerland. You find yourself in a wilder and sterner 
district. Wide moors, vast steppes without grass or herds of 
horses, stretch away to the mountains of the Corréze on the 
horizon. The far-off hills do not tower above the plain, a 
grandly, rent wall of rock like the Alps in the south ; you look 
in vain for the desolate peaks and glowing gorges of the Apen- 
nine, or for the majesty of the Pyrenees—the curving wave- 
like swell of the hills of the Corréze bears witness to their 
origin, to the peaceful slow subsidence of the waters which 
once overwhelmed this country. 

These undulations, characteristic of this, and, indeed, of 
most of the hill districts of France, have perhaps, contributed 
quite as much as the climate to gain for the land its title of 
“the kindly,’’ which Europe has confirmed. But it is a 
dreary transition country which separates Limousin from the 
provinces of Marche and Auvergne. In the mind of the poet 
and thinker who crosses it, it calls up visions of the Infinite 
(a terrible thought for certain souls); a woman looking out 
on its monotonous sameness is driven to muse; and to those 
who must dwell with the wilderness, nature shows herself stub- 
born, peevish, and barren; ’tis a churlish soil that covers 
these wide gray plains. 

Only the neighborhood of a great capital can work such a 
miracle as transformed Brie during the last two centuries. 
Here there is no large settlement which sometimes puts life 
into the waste lands which the agricultural economist regards 
as blanks in creation, spots where civilization groans aghast, 
and the tourist finds no inns and a total absence of that pic- 
turesqueness in which he delights. 

But to lofty spirits the moors, the shadows needed in the 
vast picture of nature, are not repellent. In our own day, 
Fenimore Cooper, owner of so melancholy a talent, has set 
forth the mysterious charm of great solitudes magnificently in 


84 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘¢The Prairie.’’ But the wastes shunned by every form of 
plant life, the barren soil covered with loose stones and water- 
borne pebbles, the ‘‘ bad lands’’ of the earth, are so many 
_ challenges to civilization. France must face her difficulties 
and find a solution for them, as the British are doing; their 
patient heroism is turning the most barren heather-land in 
Scotland into productive farms. Left to their primitive deso- 
lation, these fallows produce a crop of discouragement, of 
idleness, of poor physique from insufficient food, and crime, 
whenever want grows too clamorous. In these few words, you 
have the past history of Montégnac. 

What is there to be done when a waste on so vast a scale is 
neglected by the administration, deserted by the nobles, exe- 
crated by workers? Its inhabitants declare war against a 
social system which refuses to do its duty, and so it was in 
former times with the folk of Montégnac. They lived, like 
Highlanders, by murder and rapine. At sight of that country, 
a thoughtful observer could readily imagine how that only 
twenty years ago the people of the village were at war with 
society at large. 

The wide plateau, cut away on one side by the Vienne, on 
another by the lovely valleys of Marche, bounded by the Au- 
vergne to the east, and shut in by the mountains of the Cor- 
réze on the south, is very much like (agriculture apart) the 
uplands of Beauce, which separate the basin of the Loire 
from the basin of the Seine, or the plateaux of Touraine or of 
Berri, or many others of these facets, as it were, on the sur- 
face of France, so numerous that they demand the careful 
attention of the greatest administrators. 

It is an unheard-of thing that while people complain that 
the masses are discontented with their condition, and con- 
stantly aspiring towards social elevation, a government cannot 
find a remedy for this in a country like France, where statistics 
show that there are millions of acres of land lying idle, and 
in some cases (as in Berri) covered with leaf mold seven or 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 85 


eight feet thick! A good deal of this land which should 
support whole villages, and yield a magnificent return to culti- 
vation, is the property of pig-headed communes which refuse 
to sell to speculators because, forsooth, they-wish to preserve 
the right of grazing some hundred cows upon it. Impotence 
is writ large over all these lands without a purpose. Yet every 
bit of land will grow some special thing, and neither arms 
nor will to work are lacking, but administrative ability and 
conscience. 

Hitherto the upland districts of France have been sacrificed 
tothe valleys. The government has given its fostering protec- 
tion to districts well able to take care of themselves. But 
most of these unlucky wastes have no water supply, the first 
requisite for cultivation. The mists which might fertilize the 
gray dead soil by depositing their oxides are swept across 
them by the wind. Thereare notrees to arrest the clouds and 
suck up their nourishing moisture. A few plantations here 
and there would be a godsend in such places. The poor folk 
who live in these wilds, at a practically impossible distance 
from the nearest large town; are without a market for their 
produce—if they have any. Scattered about on the edges of 
a forest left to nature, they pick up their firewood and eke out 
a precarious existence by poaching ; in the winter starvation 
stares them in the face. They have not capital enough to 
grow wheat, for so poor are they that ploughs and cattle are 
beyond their means; and they live on chestnuts. If you have 
wandered through some Natural History Museum and felt the 
indescribable depression which comes on after a prolonged 
study of the unvarying brown hues of the European specimens, 
you will perhaps understand how the perpetual contemplation 
of the gray plains must affect the moral conditions of the 
people who live face to face with such disheartening ster- 
ility. There is no shadow, nor ccntrast, nor coolness; no 
sight to stir associations which gladden the mind. Onecould 
hail a stunted crab-tree there as a friend. 


86 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


The high-road forked at length, and a cross-road branched 
off towards the village a few leagues distant. Montégnac 
lying (as its name indicates) at the foot of a ridge of hill is 
the chief village of a canton on the borders of Haute- 
Vienne. The hillside above belongs to the township which 
encircles hill country and plain; indeed, the commune is a 
miniature Scotland, and has its highlands and its lowlands. 
Only a league away, at the back of the hill which shelters the 
township, rises the first peak of the chain of the Corréze, and 
all the country between is filled by the great forest of Mon- 
tégnac, crowning the slope above the village, covering the little 
valleys and bleak undulating land (left bare in patches here 
and there), climbing the peak itself, stretching away to the 
north in a long narrow strip which ends abruptly in a point 
on a steep bank above the Aubusson road. That bit of steep 
bank rises above a deep hollow through which the high-road 
runs from Lyons to Bordeaux. Many a time coaches and 
foot-passengers have been stopped in the darkest part of the 
dangerous ravine ; and the robberies nearly always went with- 
out punishment. The situation favored the highwaymen, who 
escaped by paths well known to them into their forest fast- 
nesses. In such a country the investigations of justice find 
little trace. People accordingly shunned that route. 

Without traffic neither commerce nor industry can exist ; 
the exchange of intellectual and material wealth becomes 
impossible. The visible wonders of civilization are in all cases 
the result of the application of ideas asold as man. A thought 
in the mind of man—that is from age to age the starting-point 
and the goal of all our civilization. The history of Montégnac 
isa proof of this axiom of social science. When the administra- 
tion found itself in a position to consider the pressing prac- 
tical needs of the country, the strip of forest was felled, 
gendarmes were posted to accompany the diligence through 
the two stages; but, to the shame of the gendarmerie be it 
said, it was not the sword but a voice, not Corporal Chervin 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 87 


but Parson Bonnet, who won the battle of civilization by 
reforming the lives of the people. The curé, seized with pity 
and compassion for those poor souls, tried to regenerate them, 
and persevered till he gained his end. 

After another hour’s journey across the plains where flints 
succeed to dust, and dust to flints, and flocks of partridges 
abode in peace, rising at the approach of the carriage with a 
heavy whirring sound of their wings, the Abbé Gabriel, like most 
other travelers who pass that way, hailed the sight of the roofs 
of the township with a certain pleasure. As you enter Montég- 
nac you are confronted by one of the queer posthouses, not 
to be found out of France. The signboard, nailed up with 
four nails above a sorry empty stable, is a rough oaken plank 
on which a pretentious postillion has carved an inscription, 
darkening the letters with ink: ‘‘ Poast hosses,’’ it runs. The 
door is nearly always wide open. The threshold is a plank set up 
edgewise in the earth to keep the rain-water out of the stable, 
the floor being below the level of the road outside. Within, 
the traveler sees, to his sorrow, the harness, worn, mildewed, 
mended with string, ready to give way at the first tug. The 
horses are probably not to be seen; they are at work on the 
land, or out at grass, anywhere and everywhere but in the 
stable. If by any chance they are within they are feeding. 
If the horses are ready, the postillion has gone to see his aunt 
or his cousin, or gone to sleep, or he is getting in his hay. 
Nobody knows where he is ; you must wait while somebody goes 
to find him. He does not stir until he has a mind; and when 
he comes, it takes him an eternity to find his waistcoat or his 
whip, or to rub down hiscattle. The buxom dame in the door- 
way fidgets about even more restlessly than the traveler, and 
forestalls any outburst on his part by bestirring herself a good 
deal more quickly than the horses. She personates the post- 
mistress whose husband is out in the fields. 

It was in such a stable as this that the bishop’s favorite left 
his traveling carriage. The walls looked like maps; the 


88 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


thatched roof, as gay with flowers as a garden bed, bent under 
the weight of its growing house-leeks. He asked the woman 
of the place to have everything in readiness for his departure 
in an hour’s time, and inquired of her his way to the parson- 
age. The good woman pointed out a narrow alley between 
two houses. That was the way to the church, she said, and 
he would find the parsonage hard by. 

While the abbé climbed the steep path paved with cobble- 
stones between the hedgerows on either side, the postmistress 
fell to questioning the postboy. Every postboy along the 
road from Limoges had passed on to his brother whip the 
surmises of the first postillion concerning the bishop’s inten- 
tions. So while Limoges was turning out of bed and talking 
of the execution of old Pingret’s murderer, the country-folk 
all along the road were spreading the news of the pardon 
procured by the bishop for the innocent prisoner, and prattling 
of supposed miscarriages of justice, insomuch that when Jean- 
Frangois came to the scaffold at a later day, he was likely to be 
regarded as a martyr. . 

The Abbé Gabriel went some few paces along the footpath, 
red with autumn leaves, dark with blackberries and sloes; 
then he turned and stood, acting on the instinct which 
prompts us to make a survey of any strange place, an instinct 
which we share with the horse and dog. The reason of the 
choice of the site of Montégnac was apparent ; several streams 
broke out of the hillside, and a small river flowed along by 
the departmental road which leads from the township to the 
prefecture. Like the rest of the villages in this plateau, 
Montégnac is built of blocks of clay, dried in the sun; if a 
fire broke out in a cottage, it is possible that it might find it 
earth and leave it brick. The roofs are of thatch; altogether, 
it was a poor-looking place that the bishop’s messenger saw. 
Below Montégnac lay fields of rye, potatoes, and turnips, 
land won from the plain. In the meadows on the lowest 
slope of the hillside, watered by artificial channels, were 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 89 


some of the celebrated breed of Limousin horses ; a legacy 
(so it is said) of the Arab invaders of France, who crossed 
the Pyrenees to meet death from the battle-axes of Charles 
Martel’s Franks, between Poitiers and Tours. Up above on 
the heights the soil looked parched. Now and again the 
reddish scorched surface, burnt bare by the sun, indicated the 
arid soil which the chestnuts love. The water, thriftily dis- 
tributed along the irrigation channels, was only sufficient to 
keep the meadows fresh and green; on these hillsides grows 
the fine short grass, the delicate sweet pasture that builds you 
up a breed of horses delicate and impatient of control, fiery, 
but not possessed of much staying-power ; unexcelled in their 
Native district, but apt to change their character when they 
change their country. 

Some young mulberry trees indicated an intention of grow- 
ing silk. Like most villages, Montégnac could only boast a 
single street, to wit, the road that ran through it; but there 
was an Upper and Lower Montégnac on either side of it, 
each cut in two by a little pathway running at right angles to 
the road. The hillside below a row of houses on the ridge 
was gay with terraced gardens which rose from a level of 
several feet above the road, necessitating flights of steps, 
‘sometimes of earth, sometimes paved with cobble-stones, A 
few old women, here and there, who sat spinning or looking 
after the children, put some human interest into the picture, 
and kept up a conversation between Upper and Lower Mon- 
tégnac by talking to each other across the road, usually quiet 
enough. In this way news traveled pretty quickly from one 
end of the township to the other.. The gardens were full of 
fruit trees, cabbages, onions, and potherbs ; beehives stood 
in rows along the terraces. 

A second parallel row of cottages lay below the road, their 
gardens sloping down towards the little river which flowed 
through fields of thick-growing hemp, the fruit trees which 
love damp places marking its course. A few cottages, the 


90 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


posthouse among them, nestled in a hollow, a situation well 
adapted for the weavers who lived in them, and almost every 
house was overshadowed by the walnut trees, which flourish 
best in heavy soil. At the further end of Montégnac, and on 
the same side of the road, stood a house larger and more 
carefully kept than the rest; it was the largest of a group 
equally neat in appearance, a little hamlet, in fact, separated 
from the township by its gardens, and known then, as to-day, 
by the name of ‘‘ Tascherons.’’’ The commune was not much 
in itself, but some thirty outlying farms belonged to it. In 
the valley several ‘‘ water-lanes’’ like those in Berri and 
Marche marked out the course of the little streams with green 
fringes. The whole commune looked like a green ship in the 
midst of a wide sea. 

Whenever a house, a farm, a village, or a district passes 
from a deplorable state to a more satisfactory condition of 
things, though as yet scarcely to be called strikingly pros- 
perous, the life there seems so much a matter of course, so 
natural, that at first sight a spectator can never guess how much 
toil went to the founding of that not extraordinary prosperity ; 
what an amount of effort, vast in proportion to the strength 
that undertook it ; what heroic persistence lies there buried 
and out of sight, effort and persistence without which the 
visible changes could not have taken place. So the young 
abbé saw nothing unusual in the pleasant view before his eyes ; 
he little knew what that country had been before M. Bonnet 
came to it. 

He turned and went a few paces further up the path, and 
soon came in sight of the church and parsonage, about six 
hundred feet above the gardens of Upper Montégnac. Both 
buildings, when first seen in the distance, were hard to dis- 
tinguish among the ivy-covered stately ruins of the old Castle 
of Montégnac, a stronghold of the Navarreins in the twelfth 
century. The parsonage house had every appearance of being 
built in the first instance for a steward or a head gamekeeper. 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 91 


It stood at the end of a broad terrace planted with lime trees, 
and overlooked the whole countryside. The ravages of time 
bore witness to the antiquity of the flight of steps and the 
walls which supported the terrace, the stones had been forced 
out of place by the constant imperceptible thrusting of plant 
life in the crevices, until tall grasses and wild flowers had 
taken root among them. Every step was covered with a 
dark-green carpet of fine close moss. The masonry, solid 
though it was, was full of rifts and cracks, where wild plants 
of the pellitory and camomile tribe were growing ; the maiden- 
hair fern sprang from the loopholes in thick masses of shaded ~ 
green. The whole face of the wall, in fact, was hung with 
the finest and fairest tapestry, damasked with bracken fronds, 
purple snap-dragons with their golden stamens, blue borage, 
and brown fern and moss, till the stone itself was only seen 
by glimpses here and there through its moist, cool covering. 

Up above, upon the terrace, the clipped box borders formed 
geometrical patterns in a pleasure garden framed by the par- 
sonage house, and behind the parsonage rose the crags, a pale 
background of rock, on which a few drooping, feathery trees 
struggled to live. The ruins of the castle towered above the 
house and the church. 

The parsonage itself, built of flints and mortar, boasted a 
single story and garrets above, apparently empty, to judge by 
the dilapidated windows on either gable under the high-pitched 
roof. A couple of rooms on the ground floor, separated by a 
passage with a wooden staircase at the farther end of it, two 
more rooms on the second floor, and a little lean-to kitchen 
built against the side of the house in the yard, where a stable 
and coach-house stood perfectly empty, useless, abandoned— 
this was all. The kitchen garden lay between the house and 
the church ; a ruinous covered passage led from the parsonage 
to the sacristy. 

The young abbé’s eyes wandered over the place. He 
noted the four windows with their leaded panes, the brown 


‘92 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


moss-grown walls, the rough wooden door, so full of splits 
and cracks that it looked like a bundle of matches, and the - 
adorable quaintness of it all by no means took his fancy. The 
grace of the plant life which covered the roofs, the wild 
climbing flowers that sprang from the rotting wooden sills 
and cracks in the wall, the trails and tendrils of the vines, 
covered with tiny clusters of grapes, which found their way 
in through the windows, as if they were fain to carry merri- 
ment and laughter into the house—all this he beheld, and 
thanked his stars that his way led to a bishopric, and not toa 
country parsonage. 

The house, open all day long, seemed to belong to every 
one. The Abbé Gabriel walked into the dining-room, which 
opened into the kitchen. The furniture which met his eyes 
was poor—an old oak table with four twisted legs, an easy- 
chair covered with tapestry, a few wooden chairs, and an old 
chest, which did duty as a sideboard. There was no one in 
the kitchen except the cat, the sign of a woman in the house. 
The other room was the parlor; glancing round it, the young 
priest noticed that the easy-chairs were made of unpolished 
wood, and covered with tapestry. The paneling of the walls, 
like the rafters, was of chestnut-wood, and black as ebony. 
There was a timepiece in a green case painted with flowers, a 
table covered with a worn green cloth, one or two chairs, and 
on the mantle-shelf an Infant Jesus in wax under a glass shade 
set between two candlesticks. The hearth, surrounded by a 
rough wooden moulding, was hidden by a paper screen repre- 
senting the Good Shepherd with a sheep on his shoulder. In 
this way, doubtless, one of the family of the mayor, or of the 
justice of the peace, endeavored to express his acknowledg- 
ments of the care bestowed on his training. 

The state of the house was something piteous. The walls, 
which had once been lime-washed, were discolored here and 
there, and rubbed and darkened up to the height of a man’s 
head. The wooden staircase, with its heavy balustrades, 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. . 93 


neatly kept though it was, looked as though it must totter if 
any one set foot on it. At the end of the passage, just oppo- 
site the front door, another door stood open, giving the Abbé 
Gabriel an opportunity of surveying the kitchen garden, shut 
in by the wall of the old rampart, built of the white crumb- 
ling stone of the district. Fruit trees in full bearing had been 
trained espalier-fashion along this side of the garden, but the 
long trellises were falling to pieces, and the vine-leaves were 
covered with blight. — 

The abbé went back through the house, and walked along 
the paths in the front garden. Down below the magnificent 
wide view of the valley was spread out before his eyes, a sort 
of oasis on the edge of the great plain, which, in the light 
morning mists, looked something like a waveless sea. Behind, 
and rather to one side, the great forest stretched away to the 
horizon, the bronzed mass making a contrast with the plains, 
and on the other hand the church and the castle perched on 
the crag stood sharply out against the blue sky. As the 
Abbé Gabriel paced the tiny paths among the box-edged 
diamonds, circles, and stars, crunching the gravel beneath his 
boots, he looked from point to point at the scene; over the 
village, where already a few groups of gazers had formed to 
stare at him, at the valley in the morning light, the quick-set 
hedges that marked the ways, the little river flowing under its 
willows, in such contrast with the infinite of the plains. 
Gradually his impressions changed the current of his thoughts. 
He admired the quietness, he felt the influences of the pure 
air, of the peace inspired bya glimpse of a life of biblical 
simplicity ; and with these came a dim sense of the beauty of 
that life. He went back again to look at its details with a 
more serious curiosity. 

A little girl, left in charge of the house no doubt, but busy 
pilfering in the garden, came back at the sound of a man’s 
shoes creaking on the flagged pavement of the ground-floor 
rooms. In her confusion at being caught with fruit in her 


94 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


hand‘and between her teeth, she made no answer whatever to 
the questions put to her by this abbé—young, handsome, 
daintily arrayed. The child had never believed it possible 
that such an abbé could exist—radiant in fine lawn, neat as a 
new pin, and dressed in fine black cloth without a speck or a 
crease. > 

‘¢M. Bonnet ?’’ she echoed at last. ‘‘M. Bonnet is saying 
mass, and Mlle. Ursule is gone to the church.’’ 

The covered passage from the house to the sacristy had 
escaped the Abbé Gabriel’s notice; so he went down the path 
again to enter the church by the principal door. The church 
porch was a sort of pent-house facing the village, set at the 
top of a flight of worn and disjointed steps, overlooking a 
square below; planted with the great elm trees which date 
from the time of the Protestant Sully, and full of channels 
washed by the rains. 

The church itself, one of the poorest in France, where 
churches are sometimes very poor, was not unlike those huge 
barns which boast a roof above the door, supported by brick 
pillars or tree-trunks. Like the parsonage house, it was built 
of rubble, the square tower being roofed with round tiles; but 
nature had covered the bare walls with the richest tracery 
mouldings, and made them fairer still with color and light and 
shade, carving her lines and disposing her masses, showing 
all the craftsman’s cunning of a Michel Angelo in her work. 
The ivy clambered over both sides, its sinewy stems clung to 
the walls till they were covered, beneath the green leaves, with 
as Many veins as any anatomical diagram. Under this mantle, 
wrought by time to hide the wounds which time had made, 
damasked by autumn flowers that grew in the crevices, nestled 
the singing birds. The rose window in the west front was 
bordered with blue harebells, like the first page of some richly- 
painted missal. There were fewer flowers on the north side, 
which communicated with the parsonage, though even there 
there were patches of crimson moss on the gray stone, but 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 95 


the south wall and the apse were covered with many-colored 
blossoms; there were a few saplings rooted in the cracks, 
notably an almond-tree, the symbol of hope. Two giant firs 
grew up close to the wall of the apse, and served as lightning- 
conductors. <A low ruinous wall repaired and maintained at 
elbow height with fallen fragments of its own masonry ran 
round the churchyard. In the midst of the space stood an iron 
cross mounted on a stone pedestal, strewn with sprigs of box 
blessed at Easter, a reminder of a touching Christian rite, now 
fallen into disuse except in country places. Only in little 
villages and hamlets does the priest go at Eastertide to bear to 
his dead the tidings of the Resurrection—‘‘ You will live again 
in happiness.’’ Here and there above the grass-covered 
graves rose a rotten wooden cross. 

The inside was in every way in keeping with the pictur- 
esque neglect outside of the poor church, where all the orna- 
ment had been given by time, grown charitable for once. 
Within, your eyes turned at once to the roof. It was lined 
with chestnut-wood and sustained at equal distances by strong 
king-posts set on cross-beams; age had imparted to it the 
richest tones which old woods can take in Europe. The four 
walls were lime-washed and bare of ornament. Poverty had 
made unconscious iconoclasts of these worshipers. 

Four pointed windows in the side walls let in the light 
through their leaded panes ; the floor was of brick ; the seats, 
wooden benches. The tomb-shaped altar bore for ornament a 
great crucifix, beneath which stood a tabernacle in walnut- 
wood (its mouldings brightly polished and clean), eight 
candlesticks (the candles thriftily made of painted wood), and 
a couple of china vases full of artificial flowers, things that a 
broker’s man would have declined to look at, but which must 
serve for God. The lamp in the shrine was simply a floating- 
light, like a night-light, set in an old silver-plated holy water 
stoup, hung from the ceiling by silken cords brought from the 
wreck of some chateau. The baptismal fonts were of wood 


96 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


like the pulpit, and a sort of cage where the church-wardens 
sat—the patricians of the place. Theshrine in the Lady 
Chapel offered to the admiration of the public two colored 
lithographs framed in a narrow gilded frame. The altar had 
been painted white, and adorned with artificial flowers 
planted in gilded wooden flower-pots set out on a white 
altar-cloth edged with shabby yellowish lace. 

But at the end of the church a long window covered with 
a red cotton curtain produced a magical effect. The lime- 
washed walls caught a faint rose-tint from that glowing crim- 
son; it was as if some thought divine shone from the altar to 
fill the poor place with warmth and light. On one wall of 
the passage which led into the sacristy the patron saint of the 
village had been carved in wood and painted—a St. John the 
Baptist and his sheep, an execrable daub. Yet, in spite of the 
bareness and poverty of the church, there was about the whole 
a subdued harmony which appeals to those whose spirits have 
been finely touched, a harmony of the visible and invisible em- 
phasized by the coloring. The rich dark-brown tints of the 
wood made an admirable relief to the pure white of the walls, 
and both blended with the triumphant crimson of the chancel 
window, an austere trinity of color which recalled the great 
doctrine of the Catholic Church. 

If surprise was the first feeling called forth by the sight of 
this miserable house of God, pity and admiration followed 
quickly upon it. Did it not express the poverty of those who 
worshiped there? Was it not in keeping with the quaint 
simplicity of the parsonage? And it was clean and carefully 
kept. You breathed, as it were, an atmosphere of the simple 
virtues of the fields; nothing within spoke of neglect. 
Primitive and homely though it was, it was clothed in prayer ; 
a soul pervaded it which you felt, though you could not 
explain how. 

The Abbé Gabriel slipped in softly, so as not to interrupt 
the meditations of two groups on the front benches before the 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 97 


high-altar, which was railed off from the nave by a balustrade 
of the inevitable chestnut-wood, roughly made enough, and 
covered with a white cloth for the communion. Just above 
the space hung the lamp. Some score of peasant-folk on 
either side were so deeply absorbed in passionate prayer, that 
they paid no heed to the stranger as he walked up the church 
in the narrow gangway between the rows of benches. As the 
Abbé Gabriel stood beneath the lamp, he could see into the 
two chancels which completed the cross of the ground-plan ; 
one of them led to the sacristy, the other to the churchyard. 
It was in this latter, near the graves, that a whole family clad 
in black were kneeling on the brick floor, for there were no 
benches in this part of the church. The abbé bent before 
the altar on the step of the balustrade and knelt to pray, 
giving a side glance at this sight, which was soon explained. 
The Gospel was read; the curé took off his chasuble and 
came down from the altar towards the railing; and the abbé, 
who had foreseen this, slipped away and stood close to the 
wall before M. Bonnet could see him. The clock struck ten. 

«« My brethren,’”’ said the curé in a faltering voice, ‘‘ even 
at this moment, a child of this parish is paying his forfeit to 
man’s justice by submitting to its extreme penalty. We offer 
the holy sacrifice of the mass for the repose of his soul, Let 
us all pray together to God to beseech Him not to forsake 
that child in his last moments, to entreat that repentance here 
on earth may find in heaven the mercy which has been refused 
to it here below. The ruin of this unhappy child, on whom 
. we had counted most surely to set a good example, can only 
be attributed to a lapse from religious principles ey 

The curé was interrupted by the sound of sobbing from the 
group of mourners in the transept ; and by the paroxysm of 
grief the young priest knew that this was the Tascheron family, 
though he had never seen them before. The two foremost 
among them were old people of seventy years at least. Their 
faces, swarthy as a Florentine bronze, were covered with deep 

7 





98 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


impassive lines. Both of them, in their old patched garments, 
stood like statues close against the wall; evidently this was 
the condemned man’s grandfather and grandmother. Their 
red glassy eyes seemed to shed tears of blood ; the old arms 
trembled so violently that the sticks on which they leaned 
made a faint sound of scratching on the bricks. Behind them 
the father and mother, their faces hidden in their handker- 
chiefs, burst into tears. About the four heads of the family 
knelt two married daughters with their husbands, then three 
sons, stupefied with grief. Five kneeling little ones, the oldest 
not more than seven years of age, understood nothing. prob- 
ably of all that went on, but looked and listened with the 
apparently torpid curiosity, which in the peasant is often a 
process of observation carried (so far as the outward and visi- 
ble is concerned) to the highest possible pitch. Last of all 
came the poor girl Denise, who had been imprisoned by jus- 
tice, the martyr to sisterly love; she was listening with an 
expression which seemed to betoken incredulity and straying 
thoughts. To her it seemed impossible that her brother should 
die. Her face was a wonderful picture of another face, that of 
one among the three Marys who could not believe that Christ 
was dead, though she had shared the agony of His passion. 
Pale and dry-eyed, as is the wont of those who have watched 
for many nights, her freshness had been withered more by 
sorrow than by work in the fields; but she still kept the 
beauty of a country-girl, the full plump figure, the shapely 
red arms, a perfectly round face, and clear eyes, glittering at 
that moment with the light of despair in them. Her throat, 
firm-fleshed and white below the line of sunburned brow, in- 
dicated the rich tissue and fairness of the skin beneath the 
stuff. The two married daughters were weeping ; their hus- 
bands, patient tillers of the soil, were grave and sad. None 
of the three sons in their sorrow raised their eyes from the 
ground. 

Only Denise and her mother showed any sign of rebellion 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 99 


in the harrowing picture of resignation and despairing anguish. 
The sympathy and sincere and pious commiseration felt by 
the rest of the villagers for a family so much respected had 
lent the same expression to all faces, an expression which be- 
came a look of positive horror when they gathered from the 
curé’s words that even in that moment the knife would fall. 
All of them had known the young man from the day of his 
birth, and doubtless all of them believed him to be incapable 
of committing the crime laid to his charge. The sobbing 
which broke in upon the simple and brief address grew so 
vehement that the curé’s voice suddenly ceased, and he in- 
vited those present to fervent prayer. 

There was nothing in this scene to surprise a priest, but 
Gabriel de Rastignac was too young not to feel deeply moved 
by it. He had not as yet put priestly virtues in practice; he 
knew that a different destiny lay before him; that it would 
never be his duty to go forth into the social breaches where 
the heart bleeds at the sight of suffering on every side; his 
lot would be cast among the upper ranks of the clergy which 
‘keep alive the spirit of sacrifice, represent the highest intelli- 
gence of the Church, and, when occasion calls for it, display 
these samé virtues of the village curé on the largest scale, like 
the great bishops of Marseilles and Meaux, the archbishops of 
Arles and Cambrai. The poor peasants were praying and 
weeping for one who (as they believed) was even then going 
to his death in a great public square, before a crowd of people 
assembled from all parts to see him die, the agony of death 
made intolerable for him by the weight of shame; there was 
something very touching in this feeble counterpoise of sym- 
pathy and prayer from a few, opposed to the cruel curiosity of 
the rabble and the curses, not undeserved. The poor church 
heightened the pathos of the contrast. 

The Abbé Gabriel was tempted to go over to the Tascher- 
ons and cry, ‘‘ Your son, your brother has been reprieved ! ’’ 
but he shrank from interrupting the mass; he knew, more- 


100 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


over, that it was only a reprieve, the execution was sure to 
take place sooner or later. But he could not follow the ser- 
vice ; in spite of himself, he began to watch the pastor of 
whom the miracle of conversion was expected. 

Out of the indications in the parsonage house, Gabriel de 
Rastignac had drawn a picture of M. Bonnet in his own 
mind: He would be short and stout, he thought, with a red, © 
powerful face, a rough workingman, almost like one of the 
peasants themselves, and tanned by the sun. The reality was 
very far from this; the Abbé Gabriel found himself in the 
presence of an equal. M. Bonnet was short, slender, and 
weakly-looking ; yet it was none of these characteristics, but 
an impassioned face, such a face as we imagine for an apostle, 
which struck you ata first glance. In shape it was almost 
triangular ; starting from the temples on either side of a broad 
forehead, furrowed with wrinkles, the meagre outlines of the 
hollow cheeks met at a point in the chin. In that face, over- 
cast by an ivory tint like the wax of an altar candle, blazed 
two blue eyes, full of the light of faith and the fires of a living 
hope. Along, slender, straight nose divided it into two equal 
parts. The wide mouth spoke even when the full, resolute 
lips were closed, and the voice which issued thence was one 
of those which go to the heart. The chestnut hair, thin, 
smooth, and fine, denoted a poor physique, poorly nour- 
ished. The whole strength of the man lay in his will. Such 
were his personal characteristics. In any other such short 
hands might have indicated a bent towards material pleasures; 
perhaps he too, like Socrates, had found evil in his nature to 
subdue. His thinness was ungainly, his shoulders protruded 
too much, and he seemed to be knock-kneed ; his bust was so 
over-developed in comparison with his limbs that it gave him 
something of the appearance of a hunchback without the 
actual deformity ; altogether, to an ordinary observer, his ap- 
pearance was not prepossessing. Only those who know the 
miracles of thought and faith and art can recognize and rey- 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 101 


erence the light that burns in a martyr’s eyes, the pallor of 
steadfastness, the voice of love—all traits of the Curé Bonnet. 
Here was a man worthy of that early Church which no longer 
exists save in the pages of the ‘‘ Martyrology’’ and in pictures 
of the sixteenth century; he bore unmistakably the seal of 
human greatness which most nearly approaches the divine; 
conviction had set its mark on him, and a conviction brings 
a salient indefinable beauty into faces made of the commonest 
human clay ; the devout worshiper at any shrine reflects some- 
thing of its golden glow; even as the glory of a noble love 
shines like a sort of light from a woman’s face. Conviction 
is human will come to its full strength; and being at once the 
cause and the effect, conviction impresses the most indifferent, 
it is a kind of mute eloquence which gains a hold upon the 
masses. . 

As the curé came down from the altar, his eyes fell on the 
Abbé Gabriel, whom he recognized; but when the bishop’s 
secretary appeared in the sacristy, he found no one there but 
Ursule. Her master had already given his orders. Ursule, 
a woman of canonical age, asked the Abbé de Rastignac to 
follow her along the passage through the garden. 

“Monsieur le Curé told me to ask you whether you had 
breakfasted, sir,’’ she said. ‘‘ You must have started out from 
Limoges very early this morning to be here by ten o’clock, 
so I will set about getting breakfast ready. Monsieur 1’Abbé 
will not find the bishop’s table here, but we will do our best. 
M. Bonnet will not be long; he has gone to comfort those 
poor souls—the Tascherons. Something very terrible is hap- 
pening to-day to one of their sons.”’ 

‘* But where do the poor people live?’’ the Abbé Gabriel 
put in at length. ‘I must take M. Bonnet back to Limoges 
with me at once by the bishop’s orders. The unhappy man 
is not to be executed to-day; his lordship has obtained a re- 
prieve a 

‘*Ah!”’ cried Ursule, her tongue itching to spread the 





102 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


news. ‘* There will be plenty of time to take that comfort to 
the poor things whilst I am getting breakfast ready. The 
Tascherons live at the other end of the village. You follow 
the path under the terrace, that will take you to the house.” 

As soon as the Abbé Gabriel was fairly out of sight, Ursule 
went down herself to take the tidings to the village, and to 
obtain the things needed for breakfast. 

The curé had learned, for the first time, at the church of a 
desperate resolve on the part of the Tascherons, made since 
the appeal had been rejected. They would leave the district ; 
they had already sold all they had, and that very morning the 
money was to be paid down. Formalities and unforeseen 
delays had retarded the sale; they had been forced to stay in 
the countryside after Jean-Francois was condemned, and every 
day had been for them acup of bitterness to drink. The 
news of the plan, carried out so secretly, had only transpired 
on the eve of the day fixed for the execution. The Tascherons 
had meant to leave the place before the fatal day; but the 
purchaser of their property was a stranger to the canton, a 
Corrézien to whom their motives were indifferent, and he on 
his own part had found some difficulty in getting the money 
together. So the family had endured the utmost of their 
misery. So strong was the feeling of their disgrace in these 
simple folk who had never tampered with conscience, that 
grandfather and grandmother, daughters and sons-in-law, 
father and mother, and all who bore the name of Tascheron, 
or were connected with them, were leaving the place. Every 
one in the commune was sorry that they should go, and the 
mayor had gone to the curé, entreating him to use his influ- 
ence with the poor mourners. 

As the law now stands, the father is no longer responsible 
for his son’s crime, and the father’s guilt does not attach to 
his children, a condition of things in keeping with other 
emancipations which have weakened the paternal power, and 
contributed to the triumph of that individualism which is 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 103 


eating the heart of saciety in our days. The thinker who 
looks to the future sees the extinction of the spirit of the 
family ; those who drew up the new code have set in its place 
equality and independent opinion. The family will always 
be the basis of society ; and now the family, as it used to be, 
exists no longer, it has come of necessity to be a temporary 
arrangement, continually broken up and reunited only to be 
separated again ; the links between the future and the past are 
destroyed, the family of an older time. has ceased to exist in 
France. Those who proceeded to the demolition of the old 
social edifice were logical when they decided that each mem- 
ber of the family should inherit equally, lessening the authority 
of the father, making of each child the head of a new house- 
hold, suppressing great responsibilities; but is the social 
system thus re-edified as solid a structure, with its laws of 
yesterday unproved by long experience, as the old monarchy 
was in spite of its abuses? With the solidarity of the family, 
society has lost that elemental force which Montesquieu dis- 
covered and called ‘‘honor.’’ Society has isolated its mem- 
bers the better to govern them, and has divided in order to 
weaken. The social system reigns over so many units, an 
aggregation of so many ciphers, piled up like grains of wheat 
in a heap. Can the general welfare take the place of the 
welfare of the family? Time holds the answer to this great 
enigma. And yet—the old order still exists, it is so deeply 
rooted that you find it most alive among the people. It is 
still an active force in remote districts where ‘‘ prejudice,’’ as 
it is called, likewise exists; in old-world nooks where all the 
members of a family suffer for the crime of one, and the chil- 
dren for the sins of their fathers. 
It was this belief which made their own countryside intoler- 
able tothe Tascherons. Their profoundly religious natures had 
brought them to the church that morning, for how was it pos- 
sible to stay away when the mass was said for their son, and 
prayer offered that God might bring him to a repentance 


104 _ THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


which should reopen eternal life to him ? and, moreover, must 
they not take leave of the village altar? But, for all that, 
their plans were made; and when the curé, who followed 
them, entered the principal house, he found the bundles made 
up, ready for the journey. The purchaser was waiting with 
the money. The notary had just made out the receipt. Out 
in the yard, in front of the house, stood a country cart ready 
to take the old people and the money and Jean-Frangois’ 
mother. The rest of the family meant to set out on foot that 
night. 

The young abbé entered the room on the ground floor 
where the whole family were assembled, just as the curé of 
Montégnac had exhausted all his eloquence. The two old 
people seemed to have ceased to feel from excess of grief; 
they were crouching on their bundles in acorner of the room, 
gazing round them at the old house, which had been a family 
possession from father to son, at the familiar furniture, at the 
man who had bought it all, and then at each other, as who 
should say, ‘‘Who would have thought that we should ever 
have come to this?’’ For a long time past the old people 
had resigned their authority to their son, the prisoner’s father ; 
and now, like old kings after their abdication, they played the 
passive part of subjects and children. Tascheron stood 
upright listening to the curé, to whom he gave answers in a 
deep voice by monosyllables. He was a man of forty-eight 
or thereabouts, with a fine face, such as served Titian for his 
apostles. It was a trustworthy face, gravely honest and 
thoughtful; a severe profile, a nose at right angles with the 
brows, blue eyes, a noble forehead, regular features, dark, 
crisped, stubborn hair, growing in the symmetrical fashion 
which adds a charm to a visage bronzed by a life of work in 
the open air—this was the present head of the house. It was 
easy to see that the curé’s arguments were shattered against 
that resolute will. 

Denise was leaning against the bread hutch, watching the 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 105 


notary, who used it as a writing-table ; they had given him 
the grandmother’s armchair. The man who had bought the 
place sat beside the scrivener. The two married sisters 
were laying the cloth for the last meal which the old folk 
‘would offer or partake of in the old house and in their own 
country before they set out to live beneath alien skies. The 
men of the family half-stood, half-sat, propped against the 
large bedstead with the green serge curtains, while Tascheron’s 
wife, their mother, was whisking an omelette by the fire. The 
grandchildren crowded about the doorway, and the pur- | 
chaser’s family were outside. 

Out of the window you could see the garden, carefully cul- 
tivated, stocked with fruit trees; the two old people had 
planted them—every one. Everything about them, like the 
old smoke-begrimed room with its black rafters, seemed to 
share in the pent-up sorrow, which could be read in so many 
different expressions on the different faces. The meal was 
being prepared for the notary, the purchaser, the children, 
and the men; neither the father, nor mother, nor Denise, nor 
her sisters cared to satisfy their hunger, their hearts were too 
heavily oppressed. There was a lofty and _ heart-rending 
resignation in this last performance of the duties of country 
hospitality—the Tascherons, men of an ancient stock, ended 
as people usually begin, by doing the honors of their house. 

The bishop’s secretary was impressed by the scene, so simple 
and natural, yet so solemn, which met his eyes as he came to 
summon the curé of Montégnac to do the bishop’s bidding. 

**The good man’s son is still alive,’’ Gabriel said, address- 
ing the curé. 

At the words, which every one heard in the prevailing 
silence, the two old people sprang to their feet as if the trumpet 
had sounded for the last judgment. The mother dropped her 
frying-pan into the fire. A cry of joy broke from Denise. 
All the others seemed to be turned to stone in their dull 
amazement. 


106 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘Jean-Francois ts pardoned !’’ The cry came at that 
moment as from one voice from the whole village, who rushed 
up to the Tascherons’ house. ‘‘It is his lordship the bishop.” 

‘‘T was sure of his innocence !’’ exclaimed the mother. 

‘© The purchase holds good all the same, doesn’t it?’’ asked 
the buyer, and the notary answered him by a nod. 

In a moment the Abbé Gabriel became the point of interest, 
all eyes were fixed on him; his face was so sad that it was 
suspected that there was some mistake, but he could not bear 
to correct it, and went out with the curé. Outside the house 
he dismissed the crowd by telling those who came round 
about him that there was no pardon, only a reprieve, and a 
dismayed silence at once succeeded to the clamor. Gabriel 
and the curé turned into the house again, and saw a look of 
anguish on all the faces—the sudden silence in the village had 
been understood. 

‘¢ Jean-Francois has not received his pardon, my friends,”’ 
said the young abbé, seeing that the blow had been struck, 
‘*but my lord bishop’s anxiety for his soul is so great that he 
has put off the execution that your son may not perish to all 
eternity at least.”’ 

‘Then is he living ?’’ cried Denise. 

The abbé took the curé aside and told him of his parish- 
ioner’s impiety, of the consequent peril to religion, and what 
it was that the bishop expected of the curé of Montégnac. 

‘* My lord bishop requires my death,’’ returned the curé. 
** Already I have refused to go to this unhappy boy when his 
afflicted family asked me. The meeting and the scene shere 
afterwards would shatter me like glass. Let every man do his 
work. The weakness of my system, or rather the oversensi- 
tiveness of my nervous organization, makes it out of the 
question for me to fulfill these duties of our ministry. Iam 
still a country parson that I may serve my like, in asphere 
where nothing more is demanded of me in a Christian life 
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THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 107 


matter, and tried to satisfy these good Tascherons and to do 
my duty towards this poor boy of theirs; but at the bare 
thought of mounting the cart with him, the mere idea of 
being present while the preparations for death were being 
made, a deadly chill runs through my veins. No one would 
ask it of a mother; and remember, sir, he is a child of my 
poor church ——”’ 

««Then you refuse to obey the bishop’s summons?’’ asked 
the Abbé Gabriel. 

M. Bonnet looked at him. 

‘* His lordship does not know the state of my health,” 
he said, ‘‘nor does he know that my nature rises in revolt 
against i 

‘< There are times when, like Belzunce at Marseilles, we are 
bound to face a certain death,’’ the Abbé Gabriel broke in. 

Just at that moment the curé felt that a hand pulled his 
cassock ; he heard sobs, and, turning, saw the whole family 
on their knees. Old and young, parents and children, men 
and women, held out their hands to him imploringly ; all the 
voices united in one cry as he showed his flushed face. 

** Ah! save his soul at least !”’ 

It was the old grandmother who had caught at the skirt of 
his cassock and was bathing it with tears. 

‘«T will obey, sir ’? No sooner were the words uttered 
than the curé was forced to sit down; his knees trembled 
under him. The young secretary explained the nature of 
Jean-Francois’ frenzy. 

‘‘Do you think that the sight of his younger sister might 
shake him?’’ he added, as he came to an end. 

‘*Ves, certainly,’’ returned the curé. ‘‘ Denise, you will 
go with us.”’ 

‘<So shall I,’’ said the mother. 

‘““No!’’ shouted the father. ‘‘ That boy is dead to us. 
You know that. Not one of us shall see him.’’ 

‘‘Do not stand in the way of his salvation,’’ said the 








108 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


young abbé. ‘If you refuse us the means of softening him, 
you take the responsibility of his soul upon yourself. In his 
present state his death may reflect more discredit on his family 
than his life.’’ 

‘She shall go,”’ said the father. ‘‘She always interfered 
when I tried to correct my son, and this shall be her punish- 
ment.’’ 

_.-» The Abbé Gabriel and M. Bonnet went back together to 

4. ; 
the parsonage. It was arranged that Denise and her mother 
should be there at the time when the two ecclesiastics should 
set out for Limoges. As they followed the footpath along the 
outskirts of Upper Montégnac, the younger man had an 
opportunity of looking more closely than heretofore in the 
church at this country parson, so highly praised by the vicar- 
general. He was favorably impressed almost at once by his 
companion’s simple, dignified manners, by the magic of his 
voice, and by the words he spoke, in keeping with the voice. 
The curé had been but once to the palace since the bishop 
had taken Gabriel de Rastignac as his secretary, so that he 
had scarcely seen the favorite destined to be a bishop some 
day ; he knew that the secretary had great influence, and yet 
in the dignified kindness of his manner there was a certain 
independence, as of the curé whom the Church permits to be 
in some sort a sovereign in his own parish. 

As for the young abbé, his feelings were so far from appear- 
ing in his face that they seemed to have hardened it into 
severity ; his expression was not chilly, it was glacial. 

A man who could change the disposition and manners of a 
whole countryside necessarily possessed some faculty of ob- 
servation, and was more or less of a physiognomist ; and even 
had the curé been wise only in well-doing, he had just given 
proof of an unusually keen sensibility. The coolness with 
which the bishop’s secretary met his advances and responded 
to his friendliness struck him at once. He could only account 
for this reception by some secret dissatisfaction on the other’s 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 109 


part, and looked back over his conduct, wondering how he 
could have given offense, and in what the offense lay. There 
was a short embarrassing silence, broken by the Abbé de 
Rastignac. 

‘€You have a very poor church, Monsieur le Curé,’’ he 
remarked, aristocratic insolence in his tones and words. 

‘It is too small,’ answered M. Bonnet. ‘‘ For great 
church festivals the old people sit on benches round the 
porch, and the younger ones stand in a circle in the square 
down below; but they are so silent that those outside can 
hear.”’ 

Gabriel was silent for several moments. 

“If the people are so devout, why do you leave the church 
so bare?’’ he asked at length. 

** Alas! sir, I cannot bring myself to spend money on the 
building when the poor need it. The poor are the church. 
Besides, I should not fear a visitation from my lord bishop at 
the Féte-Dieu! Then the poor give the church such things 
as they have! Did you notice the nails along the walls? 
They fix a sort of wire trellis work to them, which the women 
cover with bunches of flowers 3 the whole church is dressed in 
flowers, as it were, which keep fresh till the evening. My 
poor church, which looked so bare to you, is adorned like a 
bride, and fragrant with sweet scents; the ground is strewn 
with leaves, and a path in the midst for the passage of the 
Holy Sacrament is carpeted with rose petals. For that one 
day I need not fear comparison with Saint Peter’s at Rome. 
The Holy Father has his gold, and I my flowers; to each his 
miracle, Ah! the township of Montégnac is poor, but it is 
Catholic. Once upon a time they used to rob travelers, now 
any one who passes through the place might drop a bag full 
of money here, and he would find it when he returned 
home.”’ 

**Such a result speaks strongly in your praise, 
Gabriel. 


said 


110 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘‘T have had nothing to do with it,’’ answered the curé, 
flushing at this incisive epigram. ‘‘ It has been brought about 
by the Word of God and the sacramental bread.’’ 

‘¢ Bread somewhat brown,”’ said the Abbé Gabriel, smiling. 

‘‘ White bread is only suited to the rich,”’ said the curé 
humbly. 

The abbé took both M. Bonnet’s hands in his and grasped 
‘ them cordially. 

‘¢ Pardon me, Monsieur le Curé,’’ he said ; and in a moment 
the reconciliation was completed by a look in the beautiful 
blue eyes that went to the depths of the curé’s soul. 

‘‘My lord bishop recommended me to put your patience 
and humility to the proof, but I can go no farther. After this 
little while I see how greatly you have been wronged by the 
praises of the Liberal party.’’ . 

Breakfast was ready. Ursule had spread the white cloth, 
and set new-laid eggs, butter, honey and fruit, cream and 
coffee, among bunches of flowers on the old-fashioned table 
in the old-fashioned sitting-room. The window that looked 
out upon the terrace stood open, framed about with green 
leaves. Clematis grew about the ledge—white starry blossoms, 
with tiny sheaves of golden crinkled stamens at their hearts 
to relieve the white. Jessamine climbed up one side of the 
window, and nasturtiums on the other; above it, a trail of 
vine, turning red even now, made a rich setting, which no 
sculptor could hope to render, so full of grace was that lace- 
work of leaves outlined against the sky. 

‘* You will find life here reduced to its simplest terms,’’ said 
the curé, smiling, though his face did not belie the sadness of 
_ his heart. ‘‘If we had known that you were coming—and 
who could have foreseen the events which have brought you 
here >—Ursule would have had some trout for you from the 
torrent ; there is a trout-stream in the forest, and the fish are 
excellent ; but I am forgetting that this is August, and that 
the Gabou will bedry! My head is very much confused : 





THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 111 


*« Are you very fond of this place?’’ asked the abbé. 

‘Ves. If God permits, I shall die curé of Montégnac. 
I could wish that other and distinguished men, who have 
thought to do better by becoming lay philanthropists, had 
taken this way of mine. Modern philanthropy is the bane 
of society ; the principles of the Catholic religion are the one 
remedy for the evils which leaven the body social. Instead of 
describing the disease and making it worse by jeremiads, each 
one should have put his hand to the plough and entered God’s 
vineyard as a simple laborer. My task is far from being ended 
here, sir; it is not enough to have raised the moral standard 
of the people, who lived in a frightful state of irreligion when 
I first came here ; I would fain die among a generation fully 
convinced.”’ 

**You have only done your duty,’’ the younger man 
retorted drily ; he felt a pang of jealousy in his heart. 

The other gave him a keen glance. 

‘*Ts this yet another test?’’ he seemed to say—but aloud 
he answered humbly, ‘‘ Yes. I wish every hour of my life,’’ 
he added, ‘‘that every one in the kingdom would do his 
duty.”’ 

The deep underlying significance of those words was still 
further increased by the tone in which they were spoken. It 
was clear that here, in this year 1829, was a priest of great 
intellectual power, great likewise in the simplicity of his life ; 
who, though he did not set up his own judgment against that 
of his superiors, saw none the less clearly whither the church 
and the monarchy were going. 

When the mother and daughter had come, the abbé left 
the parsonage and went down to see if the horses had been 
put in. He was very impatient to return to Limoges. A few 
minutes later he returned to say that all was in readiness for 
their departure, and the four set out on their journey. Every 
creature in Montégnac stood in the road about the posthouse 
to see them go, The condemned man’s mother and sister 


%? 


112 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


said not a word ; and as for the two ecclesiastics, there were 
sO many topics to be avoided that conversation was difficult, 
and they could neither appear indifferent nor try to take a 
cheerful tone. Still endeavoring to discover some neutral 
ground for their talk as they traveled on, the influences of the 
great plain seemed to prolong the melancholy silence. . 

‘¢ What made you accept the position of an ecclesiastic ?”’ 
Gabriel asked at last out of idle curiosity, as the carriage 
turned into the high-road. 

‘¢T have never regarded my office as a ‘ position,’ ’’ the curé 
answered simply. ‘‘I cannot understand how any one can 
take holy orders for any save the one indefinable and all- 
powerful reason—a vocation. I know that not a few have 
become laborers in the great vineyard with hearts worn out 
in the service of the passions; men who have loved without 
hope, or whose hopes have been disappointed ; men whose 
lives were blighted when they laid the wife or the woman 
they loved in the grave ; men grown weary of life in a world 
where in these times nothing, not even sentiments, are stable 
and secure, where doubt makes sport of the sweetest certain- 
ties, and belief is called superstition. 

‘¢ Some leave political life in times when to be in power 
seems to be a sort of expiation, when those who are governed 
look on obedience as an unfortunate necessity; and very many 
leave a battlefield without standards where powers, by nature 
opposed, combine to defeat and dethrone the right. I am 
not supposing that any man can give himself to God for what 
he may gain. There are some who appear to see in the clergy 
a means of regenerating our country; but, according to my 
dim lights, the patriot priest is a contradiction in terms. The 
priest should belong to God alone. 

‘‘T had no wish to offer to our Father, who yet accepts all 
things, a broken heart and an enfeebled will ; I gave myself 
to Him whole and entire. It was a touching fancy in the old 
pagan religion which brought the victim crowned with flowers 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 113 


to the temple of the gods for sacrifice. There is something 
in that custom that has always appealed to me. A sacrifice is 
nothing unless it is made graciously. So the story of my life 
is very simple, there is not the least touch“of romance in it. 
Still, if you would like to hear a full confession, I will tell 
you all about myself. 

*¢ My family are well-to-do and almost wealthy. My father, 
a self-made man, is hard and inflexible; he deals the same 
measure to himself as to his wife and children. I have never 
seen the faintest smile on his lips. With a hand of iron, a 
brow of bronze, and an energetic nature at once sullen and 
morose, he crushed us all—wife and children, clerks and ser- 
vants, beneath a savage tyranny. I think (I speak for myself 
alone) that I could have borne the life if the pressure brought 
to bear on us had been even; but he was crotchety and 
changeable, and this fitfulness made it unbearable. We never 
knew whether we had done right or wrong, and the horrible 
suspense in which we lived at home becomes intolerable in 
domestic life. It is pleasanter to be out in the streets than in 
the house. Even as it was, if I had been alone at home, I 
could have borne all this without a murmur; but there was 
my mother, whom I loved passionately; the sight of her mis- 
ery and the continual bitterness of her life broke my heart ; 
and if, as sometimes happened, I surprised her in tears, I was 
beside myself with rage. I was sent to school; and those 
years, usually a time of hardship and drudgery, were a sort of 
golden age for me. I dreaded the holidays. My mother her- 
self was glad to come to see me at the school. 

‘*When I had finished my humanities, I went home and 
entered my father’s office, but I could only stay there a few 
months; youth was strong in me, my mind might have given 
way. 

‘One dreary autumn evening my mother and I took a 
walk by ourselves along the Boulevard Bourdon, then one of 
the most depressing spots in Paris, and there I opened my 

cero 


114 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


heart to her. I said that I saw no possible life for me save in 
the church. So long as my father lived I was bound to be 
thwarted in my tastes, my ideas, even in my affections. if I 
adopted the priest’s cassock, he would be compelled to 
respect me, and in this way I might become a tower of 
strength to the family should occasion call for it. My mother 
cried bitterly. At that very time my older brother had 
enlisted as a common soldier, driven out of the house by the 
causes which had decided my vocation. (He became a 
general afterwards, and fell in the battle of Leipsic.) I 
pointed out to my mother as a way of salvation for her that 
she should marry my sister (as soon as she should be old 
enough to settle in life) to a man with plenty of character, 
and look to this new family for support. 

‘¢So in 1807, under the pretext of escaping the conscrip- 
tion without expense to my father, and at the same time de- 
claring my vocation, I entered the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice 
at the age of nineteen. Within those famous old walls I 
found happiness and peace, troubled only by thoughts of 
what my mother and sister must be enduring. Things had 
doubtless grown worse and worse at home, for when they came 
to see me they upheld me in my determination. Initiated, 
it may be, by my own pain into the secret of charity, as the 
great apostle has defined it in his sublime epistle, I longed to 
bind the wounds of the poor and suffering in some out-of-the- 
way spot ; and thereafter to prove, if God deigned to bless my 
efforts, that the Catholic religion, as put in practice by man, 
is the one true, good, and noble civilizing agent on earth. 

‘‘ During those last days of my diaconate, grace doubtless 
enlightened me. Fully and freely I forgave my father, for I 
saw that through him I had found my real vocation. But my 
mother—in spite of a long and tender letter, in which I ex- 
plained this, and showed how the trace of the finger of God 
was visible throughout—my mother shed many tears when she 
saw my hair fall under the scissors of the church; for she 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 115 


knew how many joys I was renouncing, and did not know the 
hidden glories to which I aspired. Women are so tender- 
hearted. When at last I was God’s, I felt an infinite peace. 
All the cravings, the vanities, and cares-that vex so many > 
souls fell away from me. I thought that heaven would have 
a care for me as for a vessel of its own. I went forth intoa 
world from which all fear was driven out, where the future 
Was sure, where everything is the work of God—even the 
silence. This quietness of soul is one of the gifts of grace. 
My mother could not imagine what it was to take a church for 
a bride ; nevertheless, when she saw that I looked serene and 
happy, she was happy. After my ordination I came to pay a 
visit to some of my father’s relatives in Limousin, and one of 
these by accident spoke of the state of things in the Mon- 
tégnac district. With a sudden illumination like lightning 
the thought flashed through my inmost soul—‘ Behold thy 
vine!’ And I came here. So, as you see, sir, my story is 
quite simple and uninteresting.”’ 

As he spoke, Limoges appeared in the rays of the sunset, 
and at the sight the two women could not keep back their 
tears. 


© Meanwhile the young man whom love in its separate guises 
had come to find, the object of so much outspoken curiosity, 
hypocritical sympathy, and very keen anxiety, was lying on 
his prison mattress in the condemned cell. A spy at the door 
was on the watch for any words that might escape him waking 
or sleeping, or in one of his wild fits of fury; so bent was 
justice upon coming at the truth, and on discovering Jean- 
Francois’ accomplice as well as the stolen money, by every 
means that the wit of man could devise. 

The des Vanneaulx had the police in their interest; the 
police spies watched through the absolute silence. Whenever 
the man told off for this duty looked through the hole made 
for the purpose, he always saw the prisoner in the same atti- 


116° THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


tude, bound in his strait waistcoat, his head tied up by a 
leather strap to prevent him from tearing the stuff and the 
thongs with his teeth. Jean-Francois lay staring at the ceil- 
‘ing with a fixed desperate gaze, his eyes glowed, and seemed 
as if they were reddened by the full-pulsed tide of life sent 
surging through him by terrible thoughts. It was as if an 
antique statue of Prometheus had become a living man, with 
the thought of some lost joy gnawing his heart ; so when the 
second avocat général came to see him, the visitor could not 
help showing his surprise at a character sodogged. At sight 
of any human being admitted into his cell, Jean-Francois 
flew into a rage which exceeded everything in the doctor’s 
experience of such affections. As soon as he heard the key 
turn in the lock or the bolts drawn in the heavily-ironed door, 
a light froth came to his lips. 

In person, Jean-Frangois Tascheron, twenty-five years of 
age, was short but well made. His hair was stiff and crisp, 
and grew rather low on his forehead, signs of great energy. 
The clear, brilliant, yellow eyes, set rather too close together, 
gave him something the look of a bird of prey. His face was 
of the round dark-skinned type common in Central France. 
One of his characteristics confirmed Lavater’s assertion that 
the front teeth overlap in those predestined to be murderers ; 
but the general expression of his face spoke of honesty, of 
simple warm-heartedness of disposition—it would have been 
nothing extraordinary if a woman had loved such a man pas- 
sionately. The lines of the fresh mouth, with its dazzling 
white teeth, were gracious; there was that peculiar shade in 
the scarlet of the lips which indicates ferocity held in check, 
and frequently a temperament which thirsts for pleasure and 
demands free scope for indulgence. There was nothing of 
the workman’s coarseness about him. To the women who 
watched his trial’ it seemed evident that it was a woman who 
had brought flexibility and softness into the fibre inured to 
toil, the look of distinction into the face of a son of the 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 117 


fields, and grace into his bearing. Women recognize the 
traces of love in a man, and men are quick to see in a woman 
whether (to use a colloquial phrase), ‘‘ love has passed that 
way.”’ 

That evening Jean-Francois heard the sound as the bolts 
were withdrawn and the key was thrust into the lock; he 
turned his head quickly with the terrible smothered growl 
with which his fits of fury began; but he trembled violently 
when through the soft dusk he made out the forms of his 
mother and sister, and behind the two dear faces another— 
the curé of Montégnac. 

**So this is what those barbarous wretches held in store for 
me!’’ he said, and closed his eyes. 

Denise, with her prison experience, was suspicious of every 
least thing in the room; the spy had hidden himself, mean- 
ing, no doubt, to return; she fled to her brother, laid her 
tear-stained face against his, and said in his ear, ‘‘ Can they 
hear what we say ?”’ 

**T should rather think they can, or they would not have 
sent you here,’’ he answered aloud. ‘‘I have asked as a 
favor this long while that I might not see any of my family.’’ 

‘What a way they have treated him!’’ cried the mother, 
turning to the curé. ‘‘My poor boy! my poor boy!’’ She 
sank down on the foot of the mattress, and hid her face in 
the priest’s cassock. The curé stood upright beside her. ‘‘I 
cannot bear tosee him bound and tied up like that and put 
into that sack 43 

‘© If Jean will promise me to be good and make no attempt 
on his life, and to behave well while we are with him, I will 
ask for leave to unbind him; but I shall suffer for the slightest 
infraction of his promise.’’ 

‘‘T have such acraving to stretch myself out and move 
freely, dear M. Bonnet,”’ said the condemned man, his eyes 
filling with tears, ‘‘that I give you my word I will do as you 
wish.”’ 





118 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


The curé went out, the gaoler came, and the strait waist- 
coat was taken off. 

‘‘You are not going to kill me this evening, are you?”’ 
asked the turnkey. 

Jean made no answer. 

‘* Poor brother! ’’ said Denise, bringing out a basket, which 
had been strictly searched, ‘‘ there are one or two things here 
that you are fond of; here, of course, they grudge you every 
morsel you eat.” 

She brought out fruit gathered as soon as she knew that she 
might see her brother in prison, and a cake which her mother 
had put aside at once. This thoughtfulness of theirs, which 
recalled old memories, his sister’s voice and movements, the 
presence of his mother and the curé—all combined to bring 
about a reaction in Jean. He burst into tears, and for a mo- 
ment was completely overcome. 

‘“*Ah! Denise,’’ he said, ‘‘I have not made a meal these 
six months past; I have eaten because hunger drove me to 
eat, that is all.”’ 

Mother and daughter went out and returned, and came and 
went. The housewifely instinct of seeing to a man’s comfort 
put heart into them, and at last they set supper before their 
poor darling. The people of the prison helped them in this, 
having received orders to do all in their power compatible 
with the safe custody of the condemned man. The des Van- 
neaulx, with unkindly kindness, had done their part towards « 
securing the comfort of the man in whose power their heritage 
lay. So Jean by these means was to know a last gleam of 
family happiness—happiness overshadowed by the sombre 
gloom of the prison and death. 

‘‘ Was my appeal rejected ?’’ he asked M. Bonnet. 

“‘Yes, my boy. There is nothing left to you now but to 
make an end worthy of a Christian. This life of ours is as 
nothing compared with the life which awaits us; you must 
think of your happiness in eternity. Your account with men 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. “40 


is settled by the forfeit of your life, but God requires more, a 
life is too small a thing for Him.”’ 

«Forfeit my life ? Ah, you do not know all that I 
must leave behind.’’ : 

Denise looked at her brother, as if to remind him that pru- 
dence was called for even in matters of religion. 

‘* Let us say nothing of that,’’ he went on, eating fruit with 
an eagerness that denoted a fierce and restless fire within. 
‘¢ When must I dh 

‘* No/no/ nothing of that before me!’’ cried the mother. 

‘IT should be easier if I knew,’’ he said in a low voice, 
turning to the curé. 

‘The same as ever!’’ exclaimed M. Bonnet, and he bent 
to say in Jean’s ear—‘‘If you make your peace with God to- 
night, and your repentance permits me to give you absolution, 
it shall be to-morrow.’’ Aloud he added, ‘‘ We have already 
gained something by calming you.”’ 

At these last words, Jean grew white to the lips, his eyes 
contracted with a heavy scowl, his features quivered with the 
coming storm of rage. 

*¢ What, am I calm?’’ he asked himself. Luckily his eyes 
met the tearful eyes of his sister Denise, and he regained the 
mastery over himself. 

** Ah, well,’’ he said, looking at the curé, ‘‘I could not 
listen to any one but you. They knew well how to tame me,”’ 
and he suddenly dropped his head on his mother’s shoulder. 

‘Listen, dear,’’ his mother said, weeping, ‘‘our dear M. 
Bonnet is risking his own life by undertaking to be with you 
on the way to’’—she hesitated, and then finished—‘‘ to 
eternal life.’’ 

And she lowered Jean’s head and held it for a few moments 
on her heart. 

‘Will he go with me?’”’ asked Jean, looking at the curé, 
who took it upon himself to bow his head. ‘‘ Very well, I will 
listen to him. I will do everything that he requires of me.’’ 








120 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘Promise me that you will,’’ said Denise, ‘‘ for your soul 
must be saved; that is what we are all thinking of. And 
then—would you have it said in Limoges and all the. country 
round that a Tascheron could not die like a man? After all, 
just think that all that you lose here you may find again in 
heaven, where forgiven souls will meet again.’’ 

This preternatural effort parched the heroic girl’s throat. 
Like her mother, she was silent, but she had won the victory. 
The criminal, hitherto frantic that justice had snatched away 
his cup of bliss, was thrilled with the sublime doctrine of the 
Catholic Church, expressed so artlessly by his sister. Every 
woman, even a peasant-girl like Denise Tascheron, possesses 
at need this tender tact ; does not every woman love to think 
that love is eternal? Denise had touched two responsive 
chords. Awakened pride roused other qualities numbed by 
such utter misery and stunned by despair. Jean took his 
sister’s hand in his and kissed it, and held her to his heart in 
a manner profoundly significant; tenderly, but in a mighty 
grasp. 

“‘There,’’ he said, ‘‘ everything must be given up! That 
was my last heart-throb, my last thought—intrusted to you, 
Denise.’? And he gave her such a look as a man gives at 
some solemn moment, when he strives to impress his whole 
soul on another soul. 

A whole last testament lay in the words and the thoughts ; 
the mother and sister, the curé and Jean, understood so well 
that these were mute bequests to be faithfully executed and 
loyally demanded that they turned away their faces to hide 
their tears and the thoughts that might be read in their eyes. 
Those few words, spoken in the death-agony of passion, were 
the farewell to fatherhood and all that was sweetest on earth 
—the earnest of a Catholic renunciation of the things of earth. 
The curé, awed by the majesty of human nature, by all its 
greatness even in sin, measured the force of this mysterious 
passion by the enormity of the crime, and raised his eyes as 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 121 


if toentreat God’s mercy. In that action the touching con- 
solation—the infinite tenderness of the Catholic faith—was 
revealed—a religion that shows itself so human, so loving, by 
the hand stretched down to teach mankind the laws of a 
higher world, so awful, so divine, by the hand held out to 
guide him to heaven. It was Denise who had just discovered 
to the curé, in this mysterious manner, the spot where the 
rock would yield the streams of repentance. Suddenly Jean 
uttered a blood-curdling cry, like some hyena caught by the 
hunters. Memories had awakened. 

**No! no! no!” he cried, falling upon his knees. ‘I 
want to live! Mother, take my place. Change clothes with 
me. I could escape! Have pity! Have pity. Goto the 
King and tell him ie 

He stopped short, a horrible sound like the growl of a wild 
beast broke from him; he clutched fiercely at the curé’s 

cassock. 
© Go,’”’ M. Bonnet said in a low voice, turning to the two 
women, who were quite overcome by this scene. Jean heard 
_ the word, and lifted his head. He looked up at his mother 
and sister, and kissed their feet. 

** Let us say good-bye,’”’ he said. ‘‘ Do not come back any 
more. Leave me alone with M. Bonnet; and do not be 
anxious about me now,’’ he added, as he clasped his mother 
and sister in a tight embrace, in which he seemed as though 
he would fain put all the life that was in him. 

‘* How can any one go through all this and live?’’ asked 
Denise as they reached the wicket. 

It was about eight o’clock in the evening when they sep- 
arated. The Abbé de Rastignac was waiting at the gate of 
the prison, and asked the two women for news. 

‘* He will make his peace with God,’”’ said Denise. ‘‘If he 
has not repented already, repentance is near at hand.”’ 

A few minutes later the bishop learned that the Church 
would triumph in this matter, and that the condemned man 





122 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


would go to his execution with the most edifying religious 
sentiments. The public prosecutor was with his lordship, 
who expressed a wish to see the curé. It was midnight before 
M. Bonnet came. The Abbé Gabriel, who had been going 
to and fro between the palace and the prison, considered that 
the bishop’s carriage ought to be sent for him, for the poor 
man was so exhausted that he could scarcely stand. The 
thought of to-morrow’s horrible journey, the anguish of soul 
which he had witnessed, the full and entire repentance of this 
member of his flock, who broke down completely at last 
when the great forecast of eternity was put before him—all 
these things had combined to wear out M. Bonnet’s strength, 
for with his nervous temperament and electric swiftness of 
apprehension, he was quick to feel the sorrows of others as if 
they were his own. 

Souls like this beautiful soul are so open to receive the im- 
pressions, the sorrows, passions, and sufferings of those towards 
whom they are drawn, that they feel the pain as if it were in 
very truth their own, and this in a manner which is torture ; 
for their clearer eyes can measure the whole extent of the mis- 
fortune in a way impossible to those blinded by the egoism of 

love or paroxysms of grief. In this respect such a confessor 
_as M. Bonnet is an artist who feels, instead of an artist who 
judges. 

In the drawing-room at the palace, where the two vicars- 
general, the public prosecutor, and M. de Granville, and the 
Abbé de Rastignac were waiting, it dawned upon M. Bonnet 
that he was expected to bring news. 

‘‘ Monsieur le Curé,’’ the bishop began, ‘‘ have you ob- 
tained any confessions with which you may in confidence ~ 
enlighten justice without failing in your duty ?”’ 

‘* Before I gave absolution to that poor lost child, my lord, 
I was not content that his repentance should be as full and 
entire as the Church could require ; I still further insisted on 
the restitution of the money.”’ 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 123 


**T came here to the palace about that restitution,’’ said the 
‘public prosecutor. ‘‘ Some light will be thrown on obscure 
points in the case by the way in which it is made. He cer- 
tainly has accomplices rm 

‘* With the interests of man’s justice I have no concern,” 
the curé said. ‘‘I do not know how or where the restitution 
will be made, but made it will be. When my lord bishop 
summoned me here to one of my own parishioners, he re- 
placed me in the exact conditions which give a curé in his 
own parish the rights which a bishop exercises in his diocese 
—ecclesiastical obedience and discipline apart.’’ 

** Quite right,”’ said the bishop. ‘‘ But the point is to 
obtain a voluntary confession before justice from the con- 
demned man.”’ 

'** My mission was simply to bring a soul to God,”’ returned 
M. Bonnet. 

M. de Grancour shrugged his shoulders slightly, and the 
Abbé Dutheil nodded approval. 

‘© Tascheron, no doubt, wants to screen some one whom 
a restitution would identify,’’ said the public prosecutor. 

** Monsieur,’’ retorted the curé, ‘‘ I know absolutely noth- 
ing which might either confirm or contradict your conjecture ; 
and, moreover, the secrets of the confessional are inviolable.’’ 

«So the restitution will be made ?’’ asked the man of law. 

‘< Yes, monsieur,’’ answered the man of God. 

‘« That is enough for me,’’ said the public prosecutor. He 
relied upon the cleverness of the police to find and follow up 
any clue, as if passion and personal interest were not keener- 
witted than any detective. 





Two days later, on a market-day, Jean-Francois Tascheron 
went to his death in a manner which left all pious and politic 
souls nothing to desire. His humility and piety were exem- 
plary ; he kissed with fervor the crucifix which M. Bonnet 
held out to him with trembling hands. The unfortunate 


124 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


man was closely scanned; all eyes were on the watch te 
see the direction his glances might take ; would he look up 
at one of the houses, or gaze on some face in the crowd? 
His discretion was complete and inviolable. He met his 
death like a Christian, penitent and forgiven. 

The poor curé of Montégnac was taken away unconscious 
from the foot of the scaffold, though he had not so much as 
set eyes on the fatal machine. 


The next day at nightfall, three leagues away from Limoges, 
out on the high-road, and in a lonely spot, Denise Tascheron 
suddenly stopped. Exhausted though she was with physical 
weariness and sorrow, she begged her father to allow her to 
go back to Limoges with Louis-Marie Tascheron, one of her 
brothers. + ee 

‘* What more do you want to do in that place?’’ her father 
asked sharply, raising his eyebrows, and frowning. 

‘* We have not only to pay the lawyer, father,’’ she said in 
his ear; ‘there is something else. The money that he hid 
must be given back.’’ 

‘‘That is only right,’’ said the rigorously honest man, 
fumbling in a leather purse which he carried about him. 

‘*No,”’ Denise said swiftly, ‘‘ he is your son no longer; and 
those who blessed, not those who cursed him, ought to pay the 
lawyer’s fees.”’ 

‘*We will wait for you at Havre?’’ her father said. 

Denise and her brother crept into the town again before it 
was day. Though the police learned later on that two of the 
Tascherons had come back, they never could discover their 
lodging. It was near four o’clock when Denise and her 
brother went to the higher end of the town, stealing along 
close to the walls. The poor girl dared not look up, lest the 
eyes which should meet hers had seen her brother’s head fall. 
First of all, she had sought out M. Bonnet, and he, unwell 
though he was, had consented to act as Denise’s father and 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 125 


guardian for the time being. With him they went to the 
barrister, who lived in the Rue de la Comédie. 

** Good-day, poor children,’’ the lawyer began, with a bow 
to M. Bonnet. ‘‘ How can I be of use to you? Perhaps you 
want me to make application for your brother’s body.”’ 

‘No, sir,’’ said Denise, her tears flowing at the thought, 
which had not occurred to her; ‘‘I have come to pay our 
debt to you, in so far as money can repay an eternal debt.”’ 

««Sit down a moment,’’ said the lawyer, seeing that Denise 
and the curé were both standing. Denise turned away to draw 
from her stays two notes of five hundred francs, pinned to her 
shift. Then she sat down and handed over the bills to her 
brother’s counsel. The curé looked at the lawyer witha light 
in his eyes, which soon filled with tears. 

«« Keep it,’’ the barrister said; ‘‘ keep the money yourself, 
my poor girl. Rich people do not pay for a lost cause in this 
generous way. 

‘IT cannot do as you ask, sir, it is impossible,’’ said Denise. 

‘* Then the money does not come from you?”’ the barrister 
asked quickly. 

‘Pardon me,’’ she replied, with a questioning glance at 
M. Bonnet—would God be angry with her for that lie? 

The curé kept his eyes lowered. 

‘Very well,’’ said the barrister, and, keeping one of the 
notes in his hand, he gave the other to the curé, ‘‘ then I will 
divide it with the poor. And now, Denise, this is certainly 
mine ’’—he held out the note as he spoke—‘‘ will you give me 
your velvet ribbon and gold cross in exchange for it? I will’ 
hang the cross above my chimney-piece in memory of the 
purest and kindest girl’s heart which I shall every meet with, 
I doubt not, in my career.’’ 

‘‘ There is no need to buy it,’’ cried Denise, ‘‘I will give 
it you,’’ and she took off her gilt cross and handed it to the 
lawyer. 

‘¢ Very well, sir,’’ said the curé, ‘‘ I accept the five hundred 


126 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


francs to pay the expenses of exhuming and removing the 
poor boy’s body to the churchyard at Montégnac. Doubt- 
less God has forgiven him ; Jean will rise again with all my 
flock at the Last Day, when the righteous as well as the penitent 
sinner will be summoned to sit at the Father’s right hand.” 

‘¢So be it,’’ said the barrister. He took Denise’s hand and 
drew her towards him to put a kiss on her forehead, a move- 
ment made with another end in view. 

‘¢ My child,’’ he said, ‘‘ nobody at Montégnac has such a 
thing as a five-hundred franc-note ; they are rather scarce in 
Limoges; people don’t take them here without asking some- 
thing for changing them. So this money has been given to 
you by somebody ; you are not going to tell me who it was, 
and I do not ask you, but listen to this: if you have anything 
left to do here which has any reference to your poor brother, 
mind how you set about it. M. Bonnet and you and your 
brother will all three of you be watched by spies. People 
know that your family have gone away. If anybody recog- 
nizes you here, you will be surrounded before you suspect it.”’ 

*¢ Alas!’ she said, ‘‘I have nothing left to do here.” 

‘¢She is cautious,’’ said the lawyer to himself, as he went 
to the door with her. ‘‘She has been warned, so let her 
extricate herself.’’ 

It was late September, but the days were as hot as in the 
summer. The bishop was giving a dinner-party. The local 
authorities, the public prosecutor, and the first avocat général 
were among the guests. Discussions were started, which grew 
lively in the course of the evening, and it was very late before 
they broke up. Whist and backgammon, that game beloved 
of bishops, were the order of the day. It happened that 
about eleven o’clock the public prosecutor stepped out upon 
the upper terrace, and from the corner where he stood saw a 
light on the island, which the Abbé Gabriel and the bishop 
had already fixed upon as the central spot and clue to the 
inexplicable tangle about Tascheron’s crime—on Véronique’s 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 127 


Isle of France in fact. There was no apparent reason why 
anybody should kindle a fire in the middle of the Vienne at 
that time of night—then, all at once, the idea which had 
struck the bishop and his secretary flashed- upon the public 
prosecutor’s brain, with a light as sudden as that of the fire 
which shot up out of the distant darkness. 

** What a set of great fools we at all been!’’ cried he, 
*€ but we have the accomplices now.’ 

He went up to the drawing-room again, found out M. de 
Granville, and said a word or two in his ear; then both of 
them vanished.” But the Abbé de Rastignac, courteously 
attentive, watched them go out, saw that they went towards 
the terrace, and noticed too that fire on the shore of the island. 

*¢ It is all over with her,’’ thought he. 

The messengers of justice arrived on the spot—too late. 
Denise and Louis-Marie (whom his brother Jean had taught 
to dive) were there, it is true, on the bank of the Vienne at a 
place pointed out by Jean; but Louis-Marie had already dived 
four times, and each time had brought up with him twenty 
thousand francs in gold. The first installment was secured in 
a bandana with the four corners tied up. As soon as the 
water had been wrung from the handkerchief, it was thrown 
on a great fire of dry sticks, kindled beforehand. A shawl 
contained the second, and the third was secured in a lawn 
handkerchief. Just as Denise was about to fling the fourth 
wrapper into the fire the police came up, accompanied by a 
commissary, and pounced upon a very important ciue, as they 
thought, which Denise suffered them to seize without the 
slightest emotion. It was a man’s pocket-handkerchief, which 
still retained some stains of blood in spite of its long immer- 
sion. Questioned forthwith as to her proceedings, Denise 
said that she had brought the stolen money out of the river, as 
her brother bade her. To the commissary, inquiring why she 
had burned the wrappings, she answered that she was follow- 
ing out her brother’s instructions. Asked what the wrappings 


128 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


were, she replied boldly and with perfect truth, ‘‘ A bandana 
handkerchief, a lawn handkerchief, and a shawl.’’ 

The handkerchief which had just been seized belonged to 
her brother. 

This fishing expedition and the circumstances accompanying 
it made plenty of talk in Limoges. The shawl in particular 
confirmed the belief that there was a love affair at the bottom 
of Tascheron’s crime. 

“¢ He is dead, but he shields her still,’’ commented one lady, 
when she heard these final revelations, so cleverly rendered 
useless. 

‘¢ Perhaps there is some married man in Limoges who will 
find that he is a bandana short, but he will perforce hold his 
tongue,’’ said the public prosecutor, smilingly. 

‘‘Little mistakes in one’s wardrobe have come to be so 
compromising, that I shall set about verifying mine this very 
evening,’’ said old Mme. Perret, smiling too. 

‘‘ Whose are the dainty little feet that left the footmarks, 
so carefully erased ?’’ asked M. de Granville. 

‘‘Pshaw! perhaps they belong to some ugly woman,”’ re- 
turned the avocat général. 

‘¢ She has paid dear for her slip,’’ remarked the Abbé de 
Grancour. 

“Do you know what all this business goes to prove?’’ put 
in the avocat général. <‘‘ It just shows how much women have 
lost through the Revolution, which obliterated social distinc- 
tions. Such a passion is only to be met with nowadays in a 
man who knows that there is an enormous distance between 
him and the woman he loves.’’ 

*¢You credit love with many vanities,’’ returned the Abbé 
Dutheil. 

‘« What does Mme. Graslin think? ’’ asked the prefect. 

«¢ What would you have her think ? She was confined, as she 
told me she would be, on the day of the execution, and has seen 
nobody since; she is dangerously ill,’’ said M. de Granville. 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 129 


Meanwhile, in another room in Limoges, an almost comic 
scene was taking place. The des Vanneaulx’s friends were 
congratulating them upon the restitution of their inheritance. 

“Well, well,’’ said Mme. des Vanneaulx, ‘‘ they ought to 
have let him off, poor man. It was love, and not mercenary 
motives, that brought him to it ; he was neither vicious nor 
wicked.”’ 

*¢ He behaved like a thorough gentleman,”’ said the Sieur 
des Vanneaulx. ‘“ //l knew where his family was, I would do 
something for them; they are good people, those Tascherons.”’ 


When Mme. Graslin was well enough to rise, towards the 
end of the year 1829, after the long illness which followed 
her confinement, and obliged her to keep her bed in absolute 
solitude and quiet, she heard her husband speak of a rather’ 
considerable piece of business which he wanted to conclude. 
The Navarreins family thought of selling the forest of Mon- 
tégnac and the waste lands which they owned in the neighbor- 
hood. Graslin had not yet put into execution a clause in his 
wife’s marriage settlement, which required that her dowry 
should be invested in land ; he had preferred to put her money 
out at interest through the bank, and already had doubled 
her capital. On this, Véronique seemed to recollect the name 
of Montégnac, and begged her husband to carry out the con- 
tract by purchasing the estate for her. 

M. Graslin wished very much to see M. Bonnet, to ask for 
information concerning the forest and lands which the Duc de 
Navarreins thought of selling. The Duc de Navarreins, be it 
said, foresaw the hideous struggle which the Prince de Polignac 
had made inevitable between the Liberals and the Bourbon 
dynasty ; and augured the worst, for which reasons he was 
one of the boldest opponents of the Coup d’Etat. The Dike 
had sent his man of business to Limoges with instructions to 
sell, if a bidder could be found for so large a sum of money, 


for his grace recollected the Revolution of 1789 too well not 
9 


130 _ THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


to profit by the lessons then taught to the aristocracy. It was 
this man of business who, for more than a month, had been 
at close quarters with Graslin, the shrewdest old fox in Lim- 
ousin, and the only man whom common report singled out as 
being able to pay down the price of so large an estate on the 
spot. 

At a word sent by the Abbé Dutheil, M. Bonnet hastened 
to Limoges and the Hétel Graslin. Véronique would have 
prayed the curé to dine with her; but the banker only allowed 
M. Bonnet to go up to his wife’s room after he had kept him 
a full hour in his private office, and obtained information 
which satisfied him so well, that he concluded his purchase 
out of hand, and the forest and domain of Montégnac became 
his (Graslin’s) for five hundred thousand francs. He acqui- 
esced in his wife’s wish, stipulating that this purchase and any 
outlay relating thereto should be held to accomplish the clause 
in her marriage contract as to her fortune. Graslin did this 
the more willingly because the piece of honesty now cost him 
nothing. 

At the time of Graslin’s purchase the estate consisted of the 
forest of Montégnac, some thirty thousand acres in extent, 
but too inaccessible to bring in any money, the ruined castle, 
the gardens, and some five thousand acres in the uncultivated 
plains under Montégnac. Graslin made several more pur- 
chases at once, so as to have the whole of the first peak of the 
Corrézien range in his hands, for there the vast forest of Mon- 
tégnac came to an end. Since the taxes had been levied upon 
it, the Duc de Navarreins had not drawn fifteen thousand 
francs a year from the manor, formerly one of the richest ten- 
ures in the kingdom. The lands had escaped sale when put 
up under the Convention, partly because of their barrenness, 
partly because it was a recognized fact that nothing could be 
made of them. 

When the curé came face to face with the woman of whom 
he had heard, a woman whose cleverness and piety were well 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 131 


known, he started in spite of himself. At this time Véronique 
had entered upon the third period of her life, a period in 
which she was to grow greater by the exercise of the loftiest 
virtues, and become a totally different-woman. To the 
Raphael’s Madonna, hidden beneath the veil of smallpox 
scars, a beautiful, noble, and impassioned woman had succeeded, 
a woman afterwards laid low by inward sorrows, from which 
a saint emerged. Her complexion had taken the sallow tint 
seen in the austere faces of abbesses of ascetic life. <A 
yellowish hue had overspread the temples, grown less imperious 
now. The lips were paler, the red of the opening pomegranate 
flower had changed into the paler crimson of the Bengal rose. 
Between the nose and the corners of the eyes sorrow had worn 
two pearly channels, down which many tears had coursed in 
secret ; much weeping had worn away the traces of smallpox. 
It was impossible not to fix your eyes on the spot where a net- 
work of tiny blue veins stood out swollen and distended with 
the full pulses that throbbed there, as if they fed the source 
of many tears. The faint brownish tinge about the eyes alone 
remained, but there were dark circles under them now, and 
wrinkles in the eyelids which told of terrible suffering. The 
lines in the hollow cheeks bore record of solemn thoughts. 
The chin, too, had shrunk, it had lost its youthful fulness of 
outline, and this scarcely to the advantage of a face which 
wore an expression of pitiless . austerity, confined, however, 
solely to Véronique herself. At twenty-nine years of age her 
hair, one of her greatest beauties, had faded and grown scanty ; 
she had been obliged to pull out a large quantity of white 
hair, bleached during her confinement. Her thinness was 
shocking to see. In spite of the doctor’s orders, she had per- 
sisted in nursing the child herself; and the doctor was not 
disposed to let people forget this when all his evil prognosti- 
cations were so thoroughly fulfilled. 

‘¢See what a difference a single confinement has made in a 
woman !’’ said he. ‘‘ And she worships that child of hers ; 


132 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


but I have always noticed that the more a child costs the 
mother, the dearer it is.”’ 

All that remained of youth in Véronique’s face lay in her 
eyes, wan though they were. An untamed fire flashed from 
the dark blue iris; all the life that had deserted the cold im- 
passive mask of a face, expressionless now save for the chari- 
table look which it wore when her poorer neighbors were 
spoken of, seemed to have taken refuge there. So the curé’s 
first dismay and surprise abated somewhat as he went on to 
explain to her how much good a resident landowner might effect 
in Montégnac, and fora moment Véronique’s face grew beauti- 
ful, lighted up by this unexpected hope which began to shine 
in upon her. 

‘*I will go there,’’ she said. ‘It shall be my property. I 
will ask M. Graslin to put some funds at my disposal, and I 
will enter into your charitable work with all my might. 
Montégnac shall be cultivated; we will find water somewhere 
to irrigate the waste land in the plain. You are striking the 
rock, like Moses, and tears will flow from it!”’ 

The curé of Montégnac spoke of Mme. Graslin as a saint 
when his friends in Limoges asked him about her. 

The very day after the purchase was completed, Graslin 
sent an architect to Montégnac. He was determined to restore 
the castle, the gardens, terraces, and park, to reclaim the — 
forest by a plantation, putting an ostentatious activity into all 
that he did. 

Two years later a great misfortune befell Mme. Graslin. 
Her husband, in spite of his prudence, was involved in the 
commercial and financial disasters of 1830. The thought of 
bankruptcy, or of losing three millions, the gains of a life-— 
time of toil, were both intolerable to him. The worry and 
anxiety aggravated the inflammatory disease, always lurking 
in his system, the result of impure blood. He was compelled 
to take to his bed. In Véronique a friendly feeling towards 
Graslin had developed during her pregnancy, and dealt a fatal 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 133 


blow to the hopes of her admirer, M. de Granville. By care- 
ful nursing she tried to save her husband’s life, but only suc- 
ceeded in prolonging a suffering existence for a few months. 
This respite, however, was very useful to Grossetéte, who, 
foreseeing the end, consulted with his old comrade, and made 
all the necessary arrangements for a prompt realization. 

In April, 1831, Monsieur Graslin died, and his widow’s de- 
spairing grief only sobered down into Christian resignation. 
From the first Véronique had wished to give up her whole 
fortune to her husband’s creditors; but M. Graslin’s estate 
proved to be more than sufficient. It was Grossetéte who 
wound up his affairs, and two months after the settlement 
Mme. Graslin found herself the mistress of the domains of 
Montégnac and of six hundred and sixty thousand francs, all 
her own; and no blot rested on her son’s name. No one 
had lost anything through Graslin—not even his wife; and 
Francis Graslin had about a hundred thousand francs. 

Then M. de Granville, who had reason to know Véronique’s 
nature and loftiness of soul, came forward asa suitor; but, to 
the amazement of ail Limoges, Mme. Graslin refused the 
newly-appointed public prosecutor, on the ground that second 
marriages were discountenanced by the Church. Grossetéte, 
a man of unerring forecast and sound sense, advised Véro- 
nique.to invest the rest of M. Graslin’s fortune and her own 
in the Funds, and effected this himself for her at once, in the 
month of July, when the three per cents. stood at fifty. So 
Francis had an income of six thousand livres, and his mother 
about forty thousand. Véronique’s was still the greatest for- 
tune in the department. 

All was settled at last, and Mme. Graslin gave out that she 
meant to leave Limoges to live nearer to M. Bonnet. Again 
she sent for the curé, to consult him about his work at Mon- 
tégnac, in which she was determined to share; but he gener- 
ously tried to dissuade her, and to make it clear to her that 
her place was in society. 


134 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘‘T have sprung from the people, and I mean to return to 
them,’’ said she. 

The curé’s great love for his own village resisted the more 
feebly when he learned that Mme. Graslin had arranged to 
make over her house in Limoges to M. Grossetéte. Certain 
sums were due to the banker, and he took the house at its full 
value in settlement. 

Mme. Graslin finally left Limoges towards the end of Au- 
gust, 1831. A troop of friends gathered about her, and went 
with her as far as the outskirts of the town; some of them 
went the whole first stage of the journey. Véronique traveled 
in a caléche with her mother; the Abbé Dutheil, recently 
appointed to a bishopric, sat opposite them with old M. Gros- 
setéte. As they went through the Place d’Aine, Véronique’s 
emotion was almost uncontrollable ; her face contracted ; every 
muscle quivered with the pain; she snatched up her child, 
and held him tightly to her in a convulsive grasp, while La 
Sauviat tried to cover her emotion by following her example— 
it seemed that La Sauviat was not unprepared for something 
of this kind. 

Chance so ordered it that Mme. Graslin caught a glimpse 
of the house where her father had lived ; she clutched Mme. 
Sauviat’s hand, great tears filled her eyes and rolled down her 
cheeks. When Limoges was fairly left behind, she turned 
and took a last farewell glance; and all her friends noticed a 
certain look of happiness in her face. When the public 
prosecutor, the young man of five-and-twenty whom she had 
declined to marry, came up and kissed her hand with lively 
expressions of regret, the newly-made bishop noticed some- 
thing strange in Véronique’s eyes: the dark pupils dilated 
till the blue became a thin ring about them. It was 
unmistakable that some violent revulsion took place within 
her. 

“Now I shall never see him again,’’ she said in her 
mother’s ear, but there was not the slightest trace of feeling 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 135 


in the impassive old face as Mme. Sauviat received that 
confidence. | 

Grossetéte, the shrewd old banker, sitting opposite, watch- 
ing the women with keen eyes, had not discovered that Véron- 
ique hated this man, whom for that matter she received asa 
visitor. In things of this kind a churchman is far clearer- 
sighted than other men, and the bishop surprised Véronique 
by a glance that revealed an ecclesiastic’s perspicacity. 

‘*You have no regret in leaving Limoges?”’ the bishop 
said to Mme. Graslin. 

‘‘You are leaving the town,’’ she replied. ‘‘ And M. 
Grossetéte scarcely ever comes among us now,”’ she added, 
with a smile for her old friend as he said good-bye. 

The bishop went the whole of the way to Montégnac with 
' Véronique. 

**T ought to have made this journey in mourning,’’ she 
said in her mother’s ear as they walked up the hill near Saint- 
Léonard. 

The old woman turned her crabbed, wrinkled face, and 
laid her finger on her lips; then she pointed to the bishop, 
_ who was giving the child a terrible scrutiny. Her mother’s 
gesture first, and yet more the significant expression in the 
bishop’s eyes, made Mme. Graslin shudder. The light died 
out of her face as she looked out across the wide gray stretch 
of plain before Montégnac, and melancholy overcame her. 
All at once she saw the curé coming to meet her, and made 
him take a seat in the carriage. 

‘‘This is your domain,’’ said M. Bonnet, indicating the 
level waste. 


IV 
MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 


In a few moments the township of Montégnac came in 
sight; the hillside and the conspicuous new buildings upon it 
shone golden in the light of the sunset; it was a lovely land- 
scape like an oasis in the desert, with a picturesque charm of 
its own, due to the contrast with its setting. Mme. Graslin’s 
eyes began to fill with tears. The curé pointed out a broad 
white track like a-scar on the hillside. 

‘That is what my parishioners have done to show their 
gratitude to their lady of the manor,’’ he said. ‘* We can 
drive the whole way to the chateau. The road is finished 
now, and has not cost you a sou; we shall put ina row of 
trees beside it in two months’ time. My lord bishop can 
imagine how much toil, thought, and devotion went to the 
making of such a change.’’ 

‘* And they have done this themselves ! ’’ said the bishop. 

‘They would take nothing in return, my lord. The 
poorest lent a hand, for they all knew that one who would be 
like a mother to them was coming to live among us.”’ 

There was a crowd at the foot of the hill, all the village was 
there. Guns were fired off, and mortars exploded, and then 
the two prettiest girls of Montégnac, in white dresses, came to 
offer flowers and fruit to Mme. Graslin. 

‘*' That I should be welcomed here like this!’’ she cried, 
clutching M. Bonnet’s hand as if she felt that she was falling 
over a precipice. 

The crowd went up as far as the great iron gateway, 
whence Mme. Graslin could see her chateau. At first sight 
the splendor of her dwelling was a shock to her. Stone for 
building is scarce in this district, for the native granite is 

(136) 


, 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 1387 


hard and exceedingly difficult to work ; so Graslin’s architect 
had used brick for the main body of the great building, there 
being plenty of brick earth in the forest of Montégnac, and 
wood for the felling. All the woodwork and stone, in fact, 
came also from the forest and the quarries in it. But for 
these economies, Graslin must have been put to a ruinous 
expense ; but as it was, the principal outlay was for wages, 
carriage, and salaries, and the money circulating in the 
township had put new life into it. 

At a first glance the chateau stood up a huge red mass, 
scored with dark lines of mortar, and outlined with gray, for 
the facings and quoins and the string courses along each story 
were of granite, each block being cut in facets diamond 
fashion. The surface of the brick walls round the courtyard 
(a sloping oval like the courtyard of Versailles) was broken 
by slabs of granite surrounded by bosses, and set at equal dis- 
tances. Shrubs had been planted under the walls, with a view 
to obtaining the contrasts of their various foliage. Two hand- 
some iron gateways gave access on the one hand to the terrace 
which overlooked Montégnac, and on the other to a farm and 
outbuildings. The great gateway at the summit of the new 
road, which had just been finished, had a neat lodge on 
either side, built in the style of the sixteenth century. 

The facade of the chdteau fronted the courtyard and faced 
the west. It consisted of three towers, the central tower 
being connected with the one on either side of it by two 
wings. The back of the house was precisely similar, and 
looked over the gardens towards theeast. There was but one 
window in each tower on the side of the courtyard and gar- 
dens, each wing having three. The centre tower was built 
something after the fashion of a campanile, the corner-stones 
were vermiculated, and here some delicate sculptured work 
had been sparingly introduced. Art is timid in the provinces ; 
and though in 1829 some progress had been made in architec- 
tural ornament (thanks to certain writers), the owners of 


138 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


houses shrank at that time from an expense which lack of 
competition and scarcity of craftsmen rendered somewhat 
formidable. 

The tower at either end (three windows in depth) was 
crowned by a high-pitched roof, with a granite balustrade by 
way of decoration; each angle of the pyramid was sharply 
cut. by an elegant balcony lined with lead, and surrounded by 
cast-iron railings, and an elegantly sculptured window occupy- 
ing each side of the roof. All the door and window cornices 
on each story were likewise ornamented with carved work 
copied from Genoese palace fronts. The three side windows 
of the southern tower looked out over Montégnac, the 
northern gave a view of the forest. 

From the eastern windows you could see beyond the gar- 
dens that part of Montégnac where the Tascherons had lived, 
and far down below in the valley the road which led to the 
chief town in the arrondissement. From the west front, 
which faced towards the courtyard, you saw the wide map of 
the plain stretching away on the Montégnac side to the moun- 
tains of the Corréze, and elsewhere to the circle of the 
horizon, where it blended with the sky. 

The wings. were low, the single story being built in the 
mansard roof, in the old French style, but the towers at 
either end rose astory higher. The central tower was crowned 
by a sort of flattened dome like the clock towers of the Tuil- 
eries or the Louvre ; the single room in the turret was a sort 
of belvedere, and fitted with a turret-clock. Ridge tiles had 
been used for economy’s sake; the massive balks of timber 
from the forest readily carried the enormous weight of the 
roof. 

Graslin’s “ folly,’? as he called the chateau, had brought 
five hundred thousand francs into the commune. He had 
planned the road before he died, and the commune out of 
gratitude had finished it. Montégnac had, moreover, grown 
considerably. Behind the stables and outbuildings, on the 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 139 


north side of the hill where it slopes gradually down into the 
plain, Graslin had begun to build the steadings of a farm on 
a large scale, which showed that he had meant to turn the 
waste land in the plain to account. The plantations con- 
sidered indispensable by M. Bonnet were still proceeding 
under the direction of a head gardener with six men, who 
were lodged in the outbuildings. 

The whole ground floor of the chateau, taken up by sitting. 
rooms, had been splendidly furnished, but the second story 
was rather bare, M. Graslin’s death having suspended the up- 
holsterer’s operations. 

«Ah! my lord,’’ said Mme. Graslin, turning to the bishop, 
after they had been through the chateau, ‘I had thought to 
live here in a thatched cottage. Poor M. Graslin committed 
many follies ‘ 

*¢ And you ”’ the bishop added, after a pause, and Mme. 
Graslin’s light shudder did not escape him—‘‘ you are about 
to do charitable deeds, are you not ?”’ , 

She went to her mother, who held little Francis by the 
hand, laid her hand on the old woman’s arm, and went with 
the two as far as the long terrace which rose above the church 
and the parsonage ; all the houses in the village, rising step- 
wise up the hillside, could be seen at once. The curé took 
possession of M. Dutheil, and began to point out the various 
features of the landscape ; but the eyes of both ecclesiastics 
soon turned to the terrace, where Véronique and her mother 
stood motionless as statues ; the older woman took out a hand- 
kerchief and wiped her eyes, her daughter leaned upon the 
balustrade, and seemed to be pointing out the church below. 

‘What is the matter, madame ?’”’ the Curé Bonnet asked, 
turning to La Sauviat. 

‘‘Nothing,’’ answered Mme. Graslin, coming towards the 
two priests and facing them. ‘I did not know that the 
churchyard would be right under my eyes de 

** You can have it removed ; the law is on your side.”’ 











140 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘* The daw /’’ the words broke from her like a cry of pain. 

Again the bishop looked at Véronique. But she—tired of 
meeting that sombre glance, which seemed to lay bare the 
soul and discover her secret in its depths, a secret buried in a 
grave in that churchyard—cried out— 

“Very well, then—yes /’’ 

The bishop laid his hand over his eyes, so overwhelmed by 
this, that for some moments he stood lost in thought. 

‘¢Hold her up,’’ cried the old mother; ‘‘she is turning 
pale.’’ 

‘¢ The air here is so keen, I have taken a chill,’? murmured 
Mme. Graslin, and she sank fainting as the two ecclesiastics 
caught her in their arms. They carried her into the house, 
and when she came to herself again she saw the bishop and 
the curé kneeling in prayer for her. 

‘*May the angel which has visited you ever stay beside 
you!’’ the bishop said, as he gave her his blessing. ‘* Adieu, 
my daughter.’’ 

Mme. Graslin burst into tears at the words. 

‘*Ts she really saved ?’’ cried the old mother. 

‘¢In this world and in the next,’’ the bishop turned to an- 
swer, as he left the room. 

Mme. Graslin had been carried by her mother’s orders to a 
room on the first floor of the southern tower ; the windows 
looked out upon the churchyard and the south side of Mon- 
tégnac. Here she chose to remain, and installed herself there 
as best she could with her maid Aline, and little Francis. 
Mme. Sauviat’s room naturally was near her daughter’s. 

It was some days before Mme. Graslin recovered from the 
cruel agitation which prostrated her on the day of her arrival, 
and, moreover, her mother insisted that she must stay in bed in 
the morning. In the evening, however, Véronique came to sit 
on a bench on the terrace, and looked down on the church 
and parsonage and into the churchyard. In spite of mute 
opposition on Mme. Sauviat’s part, Véronique contracted a 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 141 


habit of always sitting in the same place and giving way to 
melancholy broodings; it was almost a mania. 

** Madame is dying,’”’ Aline said to the old mother. 

At last the two women spoke to the curé; and he, good 
man, who had shrunk from intruding himself upon Mme. 
Graslin, came assiduously to see her when he learned that 
she was suffering from some malady of the soul, carefully 
timing his visits so that he always found Véronique and the 
child, both in mourning, out on the terrace. The country 
was already beginning to look dreary and sombre in the early 
days of October. 

When Véronique first came to the chateau, M. Bonnet had 
seen at once that she was suffering from some hidden wound, 
but he thought it better to wait until his future penitent should 
give him her confidence. One evening, however, he saw an 
expression in Mme. Graslin’s eyes that warned him to hesitate 
no longer—the dull apathy of a mind brooding over the 
thought of death. He set himself to check the progress of 
this cruel disease of the mind. 

At first there was a sort of struggle between them, a fence 
of empty words, each of them striving to disguise their 
thoughts. The evening was chilly, but for all that Véronique 
sat out on the granite bench with little Francis on her knee. 
She could not see the churchyard, for Mme. Sauviat, leaning 
against the parapet, deliberately shut it out from sight. Aline 
stood waiting to take the child indoors. It was the seventh 
time that the curé had found Véronique there on the terrace. 
He spoke— 

“«T used to think that you were merely sad, madame, but,”’ 
and he lowered his voice and spoke in her ear, “this is de- 
spair. Despair, Madame Graslin, is neither Christian nor 
is it Catholic.’’ 

“*Oh!’’ she exclaimed, with an intent glance at the sky, 
and a bitter smile stole over her lips, ‘‘ what would the church 
leave to a damned soul, if not despair? ’”’ 


142 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Her words revealed to the curé how far this soul had been 
laid waste. 

‘* Ah! you are making for yourself a hell out of this hill- 
side, when it should rather be a calvary whence your soul 
might lift itself up towards heaven.’’ 

‘‘T am too humble now,”’ she said, ‘‘ to put myself on such 
a pedestal,’’ and her tone was a revelation of the depth of her 
self-scorn. 

Then a sudden light flashed across the curé—one of the 
inspirations which come so often and so naturally to noble 
and pure souls who live with God. He took up the child and 
kissed him on the forehead. ‘‘ Poor little one!’’ he said, in 
a fatherly voice, and gave the child to the nurse, who took 
him away. Mme. Sauviat looked at her daughter, and saw 
how powerfully those words had wrought on her, for Véron- 
ique’s eyes, long dry, were wet with tears. Then she too 
‘went, with a sign to the priest. 

** Will you take a walk on the terrace?’’ suggested M. 
Bonnet when they were alone. ‘‘ You are in my charge; I 
am accountable to God for your sick soul,’’ and they went 
towards the end of the terrace above ‘‘ Tascherons’.”’ 

‘* Leave me to recover from my prostration,’’ she said. 

‘‘ Your prostration is the result of pernicious broodings.”’ 

‘**Yes,’’ she said, with the naiveté of pain, too sorely 
troubled to fence any longer. 

“‘T see,’’ he answered; ‘‘ you have sunk into the depths of 
indifference. If physical pain passes a certain point it extin- 
guishes modesty, and so it is with mental anguish, it reaches a 
degree when the soul grows faint within us; I know.” 

Véronique was not prepared for this subtle observation and 
tender pity in M. Bonnet; but as has been seen already, the 
quick sympathies of a heart unjaded by emotion of its own 
had taught him to detect and feel the pain of others among 
his flock with the maternal instinct of a woman. This apos- 
tolic tenderness, this mens divinior, raises the priest above his 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 143 


fellow-men and makes of him a being divine. Mme. Graslin 
had not as yet looked deep enough into the curé’s nature to 
discover the beauty hidden away in that soul, the source of 
its grace and freshness and its inner life. 

**Ah! monsieur ’* she began, and a glance and a 
gesture, such a gesture and glance as the dying give, put her 
secret into his keeping. 

“‘T understand !’’ he answered. ‘‘ But what then? What 
is to be done? ”’ 

Silently they went along the terrace towards the plain. To 
the bearer of good-tidings, the son of Christ, the solemn 
moment seemed propitious. 

«Suppose that you stood now before the Throne of God,”’ 
he said, and his voice grew low and mysterious, ‘‘ what would 
you say to Him?”’ 

Mme. Graslin stopped short as if thunderstruck; a light 
shudder ran through her. 

“‘T should say to Him as Christ said, ‘My Father, Thou 
hast forsaken me!’’’ she answered simply. The tones of her 
voice brought tears to the curé’s eyes. 

**Oh Magdalen, those are the very words I was waiting to 
hear!’’ he exclaimed, unable to refuse his admiration. ‘‘ You 
see, you appeal to God’s justice! Listen, madame, religion 
is the rule of God before the time. The church reserves the 
right of judgment in all that concerns the soul. Man’s justice 
is but the faint image of God’s justice, a pale shadow of the 
eternal adapted to the temporal needs of society.”’ 

‘* What do you mean?”’ 

«¢ You are not judge in your own cause, you are amenable to 
God ; you have no right to condemn nor to pardon yourself. 
God is the great reviser of judgments, my daughter.”’ 

«* Ah!’ she cried. 

‘* He sees to the origin of all things, while we only see the 
things themselves.’’ 

Again Véronique stopped. These ideas were new to her. 





144 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


“To asoul as lofty as yours,’’ he went on courageously, 
‘‘T do not speak as to my poor parishioners; I owe it to you 
to use a different language. You who have so cultivated your 
mind can rise to the knowledge of the spirit of the Catholic 
religion, which words and symbols must express and make 
visible to the eyes of babes and the poor. Follow what I 
am about to say carefully, for it refers to you; and if the 
point of view which I take for the moment seems wide, it is 
none the less your own case which I am considering, and now 
about to make clear to your understanding. 

‘‘ Justice, devised for the protection of society, is based upon 
a theory of the equality of individuals. Society, which is 
nothing but an aggregation of facts, is based on zneguality. 
So there is a fundamental discrepancy between justice and 
fact. Should the law exercise a restraining or encouraging 
influence on the progress of society? In other words, should 
the law oppose itself to the internal tendency of society, so 
as to maintain things as they are; or, on the other hand, 
should the law be more flexible, adapt itself, and keep pace 
with the tendency so as to guide it? No maker of laws since 
men began to live together has taken it upon himself to decide 
that problem. All legislators have been content to analyze 
facts, to indicate those which seemed to them to be blame- 
worthy or criminal, and to prescribe punishments or rewards. 
Such is law as man has made it. It is powerless to prevent 
evil-doing ; powerless no less to prevent offenders who have 
been punished from offending again. 

** Philanthropy is a sublime error. Philanthropy vainly 
applies severe discipline to the body, while it cannot find the 
balm which heals the soul. Philanthropy conceives projects, 
sets forth theories, and leaves mankind to carry them out by 
means of silence, work, and discipline—dumb methods, with 
no virtue inthem. Religion knows nought of these imperfec- 
tions; for her, life extends beyond this world ; for religion, we 
are all of us fallen creatures in a state of degradation, and it 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 145 


is this very view of mankind which opens out to us an 
inexhaustible treasure of indulgence. All of us are on the 
way to our complete regeneration, some of us are farther 
advanced, and some less, but none of us_are infallible; the 
church is prepared for sins, aye, and even for crimes. In 
a criminal, society sees an individual to be cut off from its 
midst, but the church sees in him a soul to be saved. And 
more, far more ! Inspired by God, whose dealings with 
man she watches and ponders, the church admits our inequal- 
ity as human beings, and takes the disproportionate burden 
into account, and we who are so unequal in heart, in body or 
mind, in courage or aptitude, are made equal by repentance. 
In this, madame, equality is no empty word ; we can be, and 
are, all equal through our sentiments, 

**One idea runs through all religions, from the uncouth 
fetichism of the savage to the graceful imaginings of the 
Greek and the profound and ingenious doctrines of India 
and Egypt, an idea that finds expression in all cults joyous 
or gloomy, a conviction of man’s fall and of his sin, whence, 
everywhere, the idea of sacrifice and redemption. 

‘““The death of the Redeemer, who died for the whole 
human race, is for us a symbol ; this, too, we must do for our- 
selves; we must redeem our errors !—redeem our sins !—re- 
deem our crimes! There is no sin beyond redemption—all 
Catholicism lies in that. It is the wherefore of the holy 
sacraments which assist in the work of grace and sustain the 
repentant sinner. And though one should weep, madame, 
and sigh like the Magdalen in the desert, this is but the begin- 
ning—an action is the end. The monasteries wept, but acted 
too; they prayed, but they civilized; they were the active 
practical spreaders of our divine religion. They built, and 
planted, and tilled Europe; they rescued the treasures of 
learning for us; to them we owe the preservation of our juris- 
prudence, our traditions of statecraft and art. The sites of 
those centres of light will be for ever remembered in Europe 

10 





146 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


with gratitude. Most modern towns sprang up about a mon- 
astery. 
‘*If you believe that God is to judge you, the church, 


“using my voice, tells you that there is no sin beyond redemp- 


tion through the good works of repentance. The evil we 
have wrought is weighed against the good that we have done 
by the great hands of God. Be yourself a monastery here ; 
it is within your power to work miracles once more. For you, 
work must be prayer. Your work should be to diffuse happi- 
ness among those above whom you have been set by your 
fortune and your intellect, and in all ways, even by your 
natural position, for the height of your ch&teau above the 
village is a visible expression of your social position.”’ 

They were turning towards the plains as he spoke, so that 
the curé could point out the village on the lower slopes of 
the hill and the chateau towering above it. It was half-past 
four in the afternoon. A shaft of yellow sunlight fell across 
the terrace and the gardens; it lighted up the chateau and 
brought out the pattern of the gleaming gilt scroll-work on 
the corner balconies high up on the towers; it lit the plain 
which stretched into the distance divided by the road, a sober 
gray ribbon with no embroidery of trees as yet to outline a 
waving green border on either side. Véronique and M. Bon- 
net passed the end of the chateau and came into the court- 
yard, beyond which the stables and barn buildings lay in 
sight, and farther yet, the forest of Montégnac ; the sunlight 
slid across the landscape like a lingering caress. Even when 
the last glow of the sunset had faded except from the highest 
hills, it was still light enough in the plain below to see all the 
chance effects of color in the splendid tapestry of an autumn 
forest spread between Montégnac and the first peak of the 
chain of the Corréze. The oak trees stood out like masses 
of Florentine bronze among the verdigris greens of the walnuts 
and chestnuts; the leaves of a few trees, the first to change, 
shone like gold among the others; and all these different 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 147 


shades of color were emphasized by the gray patches of bare 
earth. The trunks of leafless trees looked like pale columns ; 
and every tint, red, tawny, and gray, picturesquely blended in 
the pale October sunshine, made a harmony of color with the 
fertile lowland, where the vast fallows were green as stagnant 
water. Not a tree stirred, not a bird—death in the plain, 
silence in the forest; a thought in the priest’s mind, as yet 
unuttered, was to be the sole comment on that dumb beauty. 
A streak of smoke rose here and there from the thatched roofs 
of the village. The chateau seemed sombre as its mistress’ 
mood, for there is a mysterious law of uniformity, in virtue 
of which the house takes its character from the dominant 
nature within it, a subtle presence which hovers throughout. 
The sense of the curé’s words had reached Mme. Graslin’s 
brain; they had gone to her heart with all the force of con- 
viction ; the angelic resonance of his voice had stirred her 
tenderness ; she stopped suddenly short. The curé stretched 
his arm out towards the forest ; Véronique looked at him. 

**Do you not see a dim resemblance between this and the 
life of humanity ? His own fate for each of us! And what 
unequal lots there are among that mass of trees. Those on 
the highest ground have poorer soil and less water; they are 
the first to die——”’ 

** And some are cut down in the grace of their youth by some 
woman gathering wood!’ she said bitterly. 

**Do not give way to those feelings again,’’ he answered 
firmly, but with indulgence in his manner. ‘‘ The forest has 
not been cut down, and that has been its ruin. Do you see 
something yonder there among the dense forest ?’’ 

Véronique could scarcely distinguish between the usual and 
unusual in a forest, but she obediently looked in the required 
direction, and then timidly at the curé. 

**Do you not observe,’’ he said, seeing in that glance that 
Véronique did not understand, ‘‘ that there are strips where 
all the trees of every kind are still green ?’’ 


148 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘¢ Oh, so there are!’’ she cried. ‘‘ How is it?”’ 

‘In those strips of green lies a fortune for Montégnac and 
for you—a vast fortune, as I pointed out to M. Graslin. 
You can see three furrows; those are three valleys, the 
streams there are lost in the torrent-bed of the Gabou. The 
Gabou is the boundary line between us and the next commune. 
All through September and October it is dry, but when 
November comes it will be full. All that water runs to waste ; 
but it would be easy to make one or two weirs across from side 
to side of the valley to keep back the water (as Riquet did at 
Saint-Ferréol, where there are huge reservoirs which supply 
the Languedoc canal); and it would be easy to increase the 
volume of the water by turning several little streams in the 
forest into the river. Wisely distributing it as required, by 
means of sluices and irrigation trenches, the whole plain can 
be brought into cultivation, and the overflow, besides, could 
be turned into our little river. 

‘‘You will have fine poplars along all the channels, and 
you will raise cattle in the finest possible meadows. What is 
grass but water and sun? You could grow corn in the plain, 
there is quite enough depth of earth ; with so many trenches 
there will be moisture to enrich the soil; the poplar trees will 
flourish along the channels and attract the rain-clouds, and the 
fields will absorb the principles of the rain: these are the 
secrets of the luxuriant greenness of the valleys. Some 
day you will see life and joy and stir instead of this prevail- 
ing silence and barren dreariness. Will not this be a noble 
prayer? Will not these things occupy your idleness better 
than melancholy broodings?”’ 

Véronique grasped the curé’s hand, and made but a brief 
answer, but that answer was grand— 

‘‘Tt shall be done, monsieur.’’ 

‘*You have a conception of this great thing,’’ he began 
again, ‘‘ but you will not carry it out yourself. Neither you 
nor I have knowledge enough for the realization of a thought 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 149 


which might occur to any one, but that raises immense prac- 
tical difficulties ; for simple and almost invisible as those diffi- 
culties are, they call for the most accurate skill of science. 
So to-morrow begin your search for the human instruments 
which, in a.dozen years’ time, will contrive that the six 
thousand acres thus brought into cultivation shall yield you 
an income of six or-seven thousand louis d’or. The under- 
taking will make Montégnac one of the richest communes in 
the department some day. The forest brings in nothing as 
yet ; but sooner or later buyers will come here for the splendid 
timber, treasures slowly accumulated by time, the only treas- 
ures which man cannot procure save by patient waiting, 
and cannot do without. Perhaps some day (who knows) 
the government will take steps to open up ways of transporting 
timber grown here to its dockyards; but the government will 
wait until Montégnac is ten times its present size before giving | 
its fostering aid; for the government, like fortune, gives only 
to those who have. By that time this estate will be one of 
the finest in France; it will be the pride of your grandson, 
who may possibly find the chateau too small in proportion to 
his income.”’ 

‘¢ That is a future for me to live for,’’ said Véronique. 

‘Such a work might redeem many errors,’ said the curé. 

Seeing that he was understood, he endeavored to send a 
last shaft home by way of her intelligence; he had divined 
that in the woman before him the heart could only be reached 
through the brain; whereas, in other women, the way to the 
brain lies through the heart. 

“Do you know what a great mistake you are making?’”’ 
he asked, after a pause. 

She looked at him with frightened eyes. 

‘‘ Your repentance as yet is only the consciousness of a 
defeat. If there is anything fearful, it is the despair of Satan ; 
and perhaps man’s repentance was like this before Jesus Christ 
came on earth. But for us Catholics, repentance is the horror 


150 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


which seizes on a soul hurrying on its downward course, and 
in that shock God reveals Himself. You are like a Pagan 
Orestes ; become a Saint Paul!”’ 

“¢ Your words have just wrought a complete change in me,’’ 
she cried. ‘‘ Now, oh! I want to live!’’ 

‘‘ The spirit has overcome,’’ the humble priest said to him- 
self, as he went away, glad at heart. He had found food for 
the secret despair which was gnawing Mme. Graslin, by giv- 
ing to her repentance the form of a good and noble deed. 

The very next day, therefore, Véronique wrote to M. Gros- 
setéte, and in answer to her letter three saddle-horses arrived 
from Limoges for her in less than a week. M. Bonnet made 
inquiries, and sent the postmaster’s son to the chateau; the 
young fellow, Maurice Champion by name, was only too 
. pleased to put himself at Mme. Graslin’s disposal, with a 
chance of earning some fifty crowns. Véronique took a liking 
for the lad—round-faced, black-eyed, and black-haired, short, 
and well built—and he was at once installed as groom; he 
was to ride out with his mistress and to take charge of the 
horses. 

The head forester at Montégnac was a native of Limoges, 
an old quartermaster in the Royal Guard. He had been 
transferred from another estate when the Duc de Navarreins 
began to think of selling the Montégnac lands, and wanted 
information to guide him in the matter; but in Montégnac 
forest Jerome Colorat only saw waste land, never likely to 
come under cultivation, timber valueless for lack of means of 
transport, gardens run wild, and a castle in ruins, calling for 
a vast outlay if it was to be set in order and made habitable. 
He saw wide rock-strewn spaces and conspicuous gray patches 
of granite even in the forest, and the honest but unintelligent 
servant took fright at these things. This was how the property 
had come into the market. 

Mme. Graslin sent for this forester. 

‘*Colorat,’’ she said, ‘‘I shall most probably ride out to- 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 151 


morrow morning and every following day. You should know 
the different bits of outlying land which M. Graslin added to 
the estate, and you must point them out to me; I want to see 
everything for myself.’’ 

The servants at the chateau were delighted at this change 
in Véronique’s life. Aline found out her mistress’ old black 
riding habit, and mended it, without being told to do so, and 
next morning, with inexpressible pleasure, Mme. Sauviat saw 
her daughter dressed for a riding excursion. With Champion 
and the forester as her guides, Mme. Graslin set herself first 
of all to climb the heights. She wanted to understand the 
position of the slopes and the glens, the natural roadways 
cleft in the long ridge of the mountain. She would measure 
her task, study the course of the streams, and see the rough 
material of the curé’s schemes. ‘The forester and Champion 
were often obliged to consult their memories, for the moun- 
tain paths were scarcely visible in that wild country. Colorat 
went in front, and Champion followed a few paces from 
her side. 

So long as they kept in the denser forest, climbing and 
descending the continual undulations of a French mountain 
district, its wonders filled Véronique’s mind. The mighty 
trees which had stood for centuries amazed her, until she saw 
so many that they ceased to be a surprise. Then others suc- 
ceeded, full grown and ready for felling; or in a forest clear- 
ing some single pine risen to giant height ; or, stranger still, 
some common shrub, a dwarf growth elsewhere, here risen, 
under some unusual conditions, to the height of a tree nearly 
as old as the soil in which it grew. The wreaths of mist — 
rolling over the bare rocks filled her with indescribable feel- 
ings. Higher yet, pale furrows cut by the melting snows 
looked like scars far up on the mountain sides; there were 
bleak ravines in which no plant grew, hillside slopes where 
the soil had been washed away, leaving bare the rock-clefts, 
where the hundred-year-old chestnuts grew straight and tall as 


152 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


pines in the Alps ; sometimes they went by vast shifting sands, 
or boggy places where the trees are few; by fallen masses of 
granite, overhanging crags, dark glens, wide stretches of burnt 
grass or moor, where the heather was still in bloom, arid and 
lonely spots where the caper grows and the juniper, then 
through meadows covered with fine short grass, where the rich 
alluvial soil had been brought down and deposited century 
after century by the mountain torrents; in short, this rapid 
ride gave her something like a bird’s-eye view of the land, a 
glimpse of the dreariness and grandeur, the strength and 
sweetness of nature’s wilder moods in the mountain country 
of midland France. And by dint of gazing at these pictures 
so various in form, but instinct with the same thought, the 
deep sadness expressed by the wild ruined land in its barren- 
ness and neglect passed into her own thoughts, and found a 
response in her secret soul. As, through some gap in the 
woods, she looked down on the gray stretch of plain below, or 
when their way led up some parched ravine where a few 
stunted shrubs starved among the boulders and the sand, by 
sheer reiteration of the same sights she fell under the influence 
of this stern scenery; it called up new ideas in her mind, 
stirred to a sense of the significance underlying these outward 
and visible forms. There is no spot in a forest but has this 
inner sense, not a clearing, not a thicket, but has an analogy 
in the labyrinth of the human thought. 

Who is there with a thinking brain or a wounded heart 
that can pass through a forest and find the forest dimb? Be- 
fore you are aware its voice is in your ears, a soothing or an 
awful voice, but more often soothing than awful. And if 
you were to examine very closely into the causes of this sensa- 
tion, this solemn, incomplex, subduing, and mysterious forest- 
influence that comes over you, perhaps you will find its source 
in the sublime and subtle effect of the presence of so many 
creatures all obedient to their destinies, immovable in sub- 
mission, Sooner or later the overwhelming sense of the abid- 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 153 


ingness of nature fills your heart and stirs deeper feelings, 
until at length you grow restless to find God in it. And so it 
was that the silence of the mountain heights about her, out 
in the pure clear air with the forest scents in it, Véronique 
recovered, as she told M. Bonnet in the evening, the certainty 
of Divine mercy. She had glimpses of the possibility of an 
order of things above and beyond that in which her musings 
had hitherto revolved. She felt something like happiness. 
For a long time past she had not known such peace. Could 
it have been that she was conscious of a certain likeness be- 
tween this country and the waste and dried-up places in her 
own soul? Did she look with a certain exultation on the 
troubles of nature with some thought that matter was punished 
here for no sin? Certain it is that her inner self was strongly 
stirred. 

More than once Colorat and Champion looked at her, and 
then at each other, as if for them she was transfigured. One 
spot in particular that they reached in the steep bed of a dry 
torrent seemed to Véronique to be unspeakably arid. It was 
with a certain surprise that she found herself longing to hear 
the sound of falling water in those scorching ravines. 

** Always to love!’’ she thought. The words seemed like 
a reproach spoken aloud by a voice. In confusion she urged 
her horse blindly up towards the summit of the mountain of 
the Corréze, and in spite of her guides dashed up to the top 
(called the Living Rock), and stood there alone. For several 
moments she scanned the whole country below her. She had 
heard the secret voices of so many existences asking to live, 
and now something took place within her that determined her 
to devote herself to this work with all the perseverance which 
she had already displayed to admiration. She tied her horse’s 
bridle to a tree and sat down onaslab of rock. Her eyes 
wandered over the land where nature showed herself so harsh 
a step-dame, and felt within her own heart something of the 
mother’s yearning which she had felt over her child. Her 


154 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


half-unconscious meditations, which, to use her own beautiful 
metaphor, ‘‘ had sifted her heart,’’ had prepared her to receive 
the sublime teaching of the scene that lay before her. 

‘‘Tt was then,’’ she told the curé, ‘‘ that I understood that 
our souls need to be tilled quite as much as the land.” 

The pale November sunlight shone over the wide landscape, 
but already a few gray clouds were gathering, driven across 
the sky by a cold west wind. It was now about three o’clock. 
Véronique had taken four hours to reach the point; but, as is 
the wont of those who are gnawed by profound inward misery, 
she gave no heed to anything without. At that moment her 
life shared the sublime movement of nature and dilated within 
her. 

**Do not stay up there any longer, madame,’’ said a man’s 
voice, and something in its tone thrilled her. ‘* You cannot 
reach home again in any direction if you do, for the nearest 
house lies a couple of leagues away, and it is impossible to 
find your way through the forest in the dark. And even those 
risks are nothing compared with the risk you are running 
where you are; in a few moments it will be deadly cold on 
the peak; no one knows the why or wherefore, but it has 
been the death of many a one before now.”’ 

Mme. Graslin, looking down, saw a face almost black with 
sunburn, and two eyes that gleamed from it like tongues of 
fire. A shock of brown hair hung on either side of the face, 
and a long pointed beard wagged beneath it. The owner of 
the face respectfully raised one of the great broad-brimmed 
hats which the peasantry wear in the midland districts of 
France, and displayed a bald but magnificent brow, such as 
sometimes in a poor man compels the attention of passers-by. 
Véronique felt not the slightest fear; fora woman in such a 
position as hers, all the petty considerations which cause 
feminine tremors have ceased to exist. 

<¢ How did you come there ?’’ she asked him. 

‘*T live here, hard by,’’ the stranger answered. 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 155 


‘‘And what do you do in this out-of-the-way place ?’’ asked 
Véronique. 

«*T live in it.”’ 

‘¢ But how, and on what do you live?’’ 

‘‘They pay me a trifle for looking after this part of the 
forest,’’ he said, pointing to the slopes of the peak opposite 
the plains of Montégnac. As he moved, Mme. Graslin caught 
sight of a game-bag and the muzzle of a gun, and any mis- 
givings she might have entertained vanished forthwith. 

‘* Are you a keeper ?”’ 

**No, madame. You can’t be a keeper until you have been 
sworn, and you can’t take the oath unless you have all your 
civic rights a 

‘¢ Then, who are you?”’ 

‘*T am Farrabesche,’’ said the man, in deep humility, with 
his eyes on the ground. 

The name told Mme. Graslin nothing. She looked at the 
man before her. In an exceedingly kindly face there were 
signs of latent savagery; the uneven teeth gave an ironical 
turn, a suggestion of evil hardihood to the mouth and _ blood- 
red lips. In person he was of middle height, broad in the 
shoulders, short in the neck, which was very full and deeply 
sunk. He had the large hairy hands characteristic of violent- 
tempered people capable of abusing their physical advantages. 
His last words suggested some mystery, and his bearing, face, 
and figure all combined to give to that mystery a terrible 
interpretation. 

**So you are in my employ ?’’ Véronique said gently. 

‘‘ Then have I the honor of ne to Mme. Graslin ?”’ 
asked Farrabesche. 

‘Yes, my friend,’’ said she. 

Farrabesche vanished with the speed of some wild creature 
after a frightened glance at his mistress. Véronique hastily 
mounted and went down to her two servants; the men were 
growing uneasy about her, for the inexplicable unwholesome- 





156 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


ness of the Living Rock was well known in the country. 
Colorat begged her to go down a little valley into the plain. 
“¢It would be dangerous to return by the higher ground,” he 
said ; ‘‘ the tracks were hard to find, and crossed each other, 
and in spite of his knowledge of the country, he might lose 
himself.”’ 

Once in the plain, Véronique slackened the pace of her 
horse. 

‘¢ Who is this Farrabesche whom you employ ?’’ she asked, 
turning to the head forester. 

‘¢ Did madame meet him ?”’ exclaimed Colorat. 

‘¢ Yes, but he ran away.”’ 

‘*Poor fellow! Perhaps he does not know how kind 
madame is.”’ 

«But, after all, what has he done? ’”’ 

‘‘Why, madame, Farrabesche is a murderer,’? Champion 
blurted out. 

‘Then, of course, he was pardoned, was he not?’”’ Véron- 
ique asked in a tremulous voice. 

‘*No, madame,’’ Colorat answered. ‘‘ Farrabesche was 
tried at the assizes, and condemned to ten years’ penal ser- 
vitude ; but he only did half his time, for they let him off the 
rest of the sentence ; he came back from the hulks in 1827. 
He owes his life to M. le Curé, who persuaded hii to give 
himself up. Judged by default, and sentenced to death, they 
would have caught him sooner or later, and he would have 
been in a bad way. M. Bonnet went out to look for him at 
the risk of his life. Nobody knows what he said to Farra- 
besche ; they were alone for a couple of days; on the third 
he brought Farrabesche back to Tulle, and there he gave him- 
self up. M. Bonnet went to see a clever lawyer, and got him 
to take up Farrabesche’s case ; and Farrabesche came off with 
ten years in jail. M. le Curé used to go to see him while he 
was in prison; and that fellow yonder, who was a terror to 
the whole countryside, grew as meek as any maid, and let 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 157 


them take him off to prison quietly. When he came out 
again, he settled down hereabouts under M. le Curé’s direc- 
tion. People mind what they say to him; he always goes on 
Sundays and holidays to the services and to mass. He hasa 
seat in the church along with the rest of us, but he always 
keeps by himself close to the wall. He takes the sacrament 
from time to time, but at the communion-table he keeps 
apart too,’’ 

*«¢ And this man has killed another man! ’’ 

“* One ?’’ asked Colorat; ‘‘he has killed a good many, he 
has! But he is not a bad sort for all that.’’ 

“Ts it possible? ’’ cried Véronique, and in her amazement 
she let the bridle fall on the horse’s neck. 

The head forester asked nothing better than to tell the tale. 

** You see, madame,”’ he said, ‘‘ Farrabesche maybe was in 
the right at bottom. He was the last of the Farrabesches, an 
old family in the Corréze; aye, yes! His eldest brother, 
Captain Farrabesche, was killed just ten years before in Italy, 
at Montenotte; only twenty-two he was, and a captain! 
That is what you might call bad luck, now, isn’t it? And he 
had a little book-learning too; he could read and write, and 
he had made up his mind to be a general. They were sorry 
at home when he died, as well they might be, indeed! I was 
in the army with Zhe Other* then; and I heard talk of his 
death. Oh! Captain Farrabesche fell gloriously; he saved 
the army, he did, and the Little Corporal! I was serving at 
that time under General Steingel, a German—that is to say, 
an Alsatian—a fine soldier he was, but shortsighted, and 
that was how he came by his end, some time after Captain 
Farrabesche’s. The youngest boy, that is, the one yonder, was 
just six years old when he heard them talking about his big 
brother’s death. The second brother went into the army too, 
but he went as a private soldier; and died a sergeant, first 
regiment of the Guard, a fine post, at the battle of Austerlitz, 

* L’ Autre, viz., Napoleon, 


158 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


where, you see, madame, they manceuvred us all as smoothly 
as if it had been review day at the Tuileries. I was there 
myself. Oh! I was lucky ; I went through it all, and never 
came in forasingle wound. Well, then, our Farrabesche, the 
youngest, brave though he was, took it into his head that he 
would not go for asoldier. And ’tis a fact, the army did not 
suit that family. When the sub-prefect wanted him in 1811, 
he took to the woods; a ‘refractory conscript,’ eh! that’s 
what they used to call them. Thereupon a gang of chauffeurs 
got hold of him by fair means or foul, and he took to warm- 
ing people’s feet at last! You understand that no one except 
M. le Curé knows what he did along with those rascals, ask- 
ing their pardon! Manya brush he had with the gendarmes, 
and the regular troops as well! First and last he has seen 
seven skirmishes.’’ : 

‘*People say that he killed two soldiers and three gend- 
armes!’’ put in Champion. 

‘* Who is to know how many ?’’ Colorat answered. ‘* He 
did not tell them. At last, madame, all the others were 
caught ; but he, an active young fellow, knowing the country 
as he did, always got away. That gang of chauffeurs used to 
hang on the outskirts of Brives and Tulle, and they would 
often come over here to lie low, because Farrabesche knew 
places where they could hide easily. After 1814 nobody 
troubled about him any more, the conscription was abolished ; 
but he had to spend the year 1815 in the woods. As he could 
not sit down with his arms folded and live, he helped once 
more to stop a coach down below yonder in the, ravine; but 
in the end he took M. le Curé’s advice, and gave himself up. 
It was not easy to find witnesses ; nobody dared give evidence 
against him. Then M. le Curé and his lawyer worked so 
hard for him that they let him off with ten years. He was 
lucky after being a chauffeur, for a chauffeur he was.”’ 

‘** But what is a chauffeur ?”’ 

‘* If you like, madame, I will just tell you the sort of thing 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 159 


they did, by all that I can make out from one and another, for 
you will understand that I was never a chauffeur myself. It 
was not nice, but necessity knows no law. It was like this: 
if they suspected some farmer or landowner.of having money 
in his possession, seven or eight of them would drop in in the 
middle of the night, and they would light a fire and have 
supper there and then; when supper was over, if the master 
of the house would not give them as much money as they 
asked, they would tie his feet up to the pot-hook at the back 
of the fire, and would not let him go until they had what they 
asked for. That was all. They came in masks. With so 
many expeditions, there were a few mishaps. Lord! yes; 
there are obstinate folk and stingy people everywhere. There 
was a farmer once, old Cochegrue, a regular skinflint he was, 
he let them burn his feet; and, well, the man died of it. 
There was M. David’s wife too, not far from Brives ; she died 
afterwards of the fright they gave her, simply seeing them tie 
her husband’s feet. ‘Just give them what you have!’ she 
said to him as she went. He would not, and she showed 
them the hiding-place. For five years the chauffeurs were the 
terror of the countryside ; but get this well into your pate—I 
beg pardon, madame !—that more than one of them belonged 
to good families, and that sort of people are not the ones to 
let themselves be nabbed.”’ 

Mme. Graslin listened and made no reply. There was a 
moment’s pause ; then young Champion, eager to interest his 
mistress in his turn, was anxious to tell what he knew of 
Farrabesche. 

**Madame ought to hear the whole truth of the matter. 
Farrabesche has not his match on horseback or afoot. He 
will fell an ox with a blow of his fist! He can carry seven- 
hundred weight, that he can! and there is not a better shot 
anywhere. When I was a little chap they used to tell me 
tales about Farrabesche. One day he and three of his com- 
rades were surprised ; they fought till one was killed and two 


160 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


were wounded ; well, and good, Farrabesche saw that he was 
caught; bah! he jumps on a gendarme’s horse behind the 
man, claps spurs to the animal, which bolts off at a furious 
gallop and is out of sight, he gripping that gendarme round 
the waist all the time; he hugged the man so tight that after 
a while he managed to fling him off and ride single in the 
saddle, so he escaped and came by a horse. And he had the 
impudence to sell it directly afterwards ten leagues on the 
other side of Limoges. He lay in hiding for three months 
after that exploit, and no one could find him. They offered a 
reward of a hundred louis to any one who would betray him.”’ 

‘* Another time,’’ added Colorat, ‘‘ as to those hundred 
louis put on his head by the prefect at Tulle, Farrabesche put 
a cousin of his in the way of earning it—Giriex it was, over 
at Vizay. His cousin denounced him, and seemed as if he 
meant to give him up. Oh! he actually gave him up; and 
very glad the gendarmes were to take him to Tulle. But he 
did not go far; they had to put him in the prison at Lubersac, 
and he got away the very first night, by way of a hole made 
by one of the gang, one Gabilleau, a deserter from the 17th, 
executed at Tuile, who was moved away the night before he 
expected to escape. A pretty character Farrabesche gained 
by these adventures. The troop had trusty friends, you know. 
And, besides, people liked the chauffeurs. Lord, they were 
quite different then from what they are nowadays, jolly fellows 
every one of them, that spent their money like princes. 
Just imagine it, madame; finds the gendarmes on his track 
one evening, does he? Well, he slipped through their fingers 
that time by lying twenty-four hours in a pond in a farmyard, 
drawing his breath through a hole in the straw at the edge of 
a dung-heap. What did a little discomfort like that matter to 
him when he had spent whole nights up among the little 
branches at the very top of a tree where a sparrow could 
hardly hold, watching the soldiers looking for him, passing 
and repassing below. Farrabesche was one of the five or six 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 161 


chauffeurs whom they never could catch; for as he was a 
fellow-countryman, and joined the gang perforce (for, after 
all, he only took to the woods to escape the conscription), all 
the women took his part, and that counts for much.”’ 

**So Farrabesche has really killed several men,’’ Mme. 
Graslin said again. 

*¢ Certainly,’’ Colorat replied; ‘* they even say that it was 
he who murdered the traveler in the coach in 1812; but the 
courier and postillion, the only witnesses who could have 
identified him, were dead when he came up for trial.’’ 

«¢ And the robbery ?’’ asked Mme. Graslin. 

‘Oh! They took all there was; but the five-and-twenty 
thousand francs which they found belonged to the govern- 
ment.’’ 

For another league Mme. Graslin rode on in silence. The 
sun had set, and in the moonlight the gray plain looked like 
the open sea. Once or twice Champion and Colorat looked 
at Mme. Graslin, for her silence made them uneasy, and both 
were greatly disturbed to see that her eyes were red with much 
weeping and full of tears, which fell drop by drop and glit- 
tered on her cheeks. 

*©Oh! don’t be sorry for him, madame,’’ said Colorat. 
‘The fellow led a jolly life, and has had pretty sweethearts. 
And if the police keep an eye on him now, he is protected by 
M. le Curé’s esteem and friendship ; for he repented, and in 
the convict’s prison behaved in the most exemplary way. 
Everybody knows that he is as good as the best among us; 
only he is so proud, he has no mind to lay himself open to any 
slight, but he lives peaceably and does good after his fashion. 
Over the other side of the Living Rock he has ten acres or 
so of young saplings of his own planting; and when he sees 
a place for a tree in the forest, he will stick one of them in. 
Then he lops off the dead branches, and collects the wood, 
and does it up in faggots ready for poor people. And the 
* poor people, knowing that they can have firewood all ready 
il 


162 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


for the asking, go to him instead of helping themselves and 
damaging your woods. So if he still ‘warms people’s feet,’ 
as you may say, it does them good now. Farrabesche is fond 
of your forest ; he looks after it as if it were his own.” 

‘And yet he lives! quite alone.’’ Mme. Graslin 
hastily added the last two words. 

‘¢ Asking your pardon, madame, no. He is bringing up a 
little lad ; going fifteen now he is,’’ said Maurice Champion. 

‘‘Faith, yes, that he is,’’ Colorat remarked, ‘‘for La 
Curieux had that child a good while before Farrabesche gave 
himself up.”’ 

‘*Ts it his son ?’’ asked Mme. Graslin. 

‘Well, every one thinks so.”’ 

‘* And why did he not marry the girl ?”’ 

‘“‘Why? Because they would have caught him! And, 
besides, when La Curieux knew that he was condemned, she 
left the neighborhood, poor thing.’’ 

‘Was she pretty?’ 

‘‘Oh, my mother says that she was very much like—dear 
me! another girl who left the place too—very much like 
Denise Tascheron.’’ 

‘* Was he loved ?’”’ asked Mme. Graslin. 

‘* Bah! yes, because he was a chauffeur /’’ said Colorat. 
‘*The women always fall in love with anything out of the 
way. But for all that, nothing astonished people hereabouts 
so much as this love affair. Catherine Curieux was a good 
girl who lived like a virgin saint ; she was looked on as a par- 
agon of virtue in her neighborhood over at Vizay, a large 
village in the Corréze, on the boundary of two departments. 
Her father and mother were tenants of M. Brézac’s. Cathe- 
rine Curieux was quite seventeen years old at the time of 
Farrabesche’s sentence. The Farrabesches were an old family 
out of the same district, but they settled on the Montégnac 
lands ; they had the largest farm in the village. Farrabesche’s 
father and mother are dead now, and La Curieux’s three 





MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 163 


sisters are married ; one lives at Aubusson, one at Limoges, 
and one at Saint-Léonard.’’ 

‘*Do you think that Farrabesche knows where Catherine 
is?’’ asked Mme. Graslin. 

‘*If he knew, he would break his bounds, Oh! he would 
go to her As soon as he came back he asked her father 
and mother (through M. Bonnet) for the child. La Curieux’s 
father and mother were taking care of the child; M. Bonnet 
persuaded them to give him up to Farrabesche.”’ 

** Does nobody know what became of her?”’ 

*‘Bah!’’ said Colorat. ‘‘ The lass thought herself ruined, 
she was afraid to stop in the place! She went to Paris. 
What does she do there? That is the rub. As for looking 
for her in Paris, you might as well try to find a marble among 
the flints there in the plain.’’ 

Colorat pointed to the plain of Montégnac as he spoke. 
By this time Mme. Graslin was only a few paces from the 
great gateway of the chateau. Mme. Sauviat, in anxiety, was 
waiting there for her with Aline and the servants; they did 
not know what to think of so long an absence. 

** Well,’’ said Mme. Sauviat, as she helped her daughter to 
dismount, ‘ you must be horribly tired.”’ 

“* No, dear mother,’?> Mme. Graslin answered, in an un- 
steady voice, and Mme. Sauviat, looking at her daughter, saw 
that she had been weeping for a long time. 

Mme. Graslin went into the house with Aline, her confiden- 
tial servant, and shut herself into her room. She would not 
see her mother; and when Mme. Sauviat tried to enter, Aline 
met the old Auvergnate with ‘‘ Madame is asleep.”’ 





The next morning Véronique set out on horseback, with 
Maurice as her sole guide. She took the way by which they 
had returned the evening before, so as to reach the Living 
Rock as quickly as might be. As they climbed up the ravine 
which separates the last ridge in the forest from the actual 


164 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


summit of the mountain (for the Living Rock, seen from the 
plain, seems to stand alone), Véronique bade Maurice show 
her the way to Farrabesche’s cabin and wait with the horses 
until she came back. She meant to go alone. Maurice went 
with her as far as a pathway which turned off towards the 
opposite side of the Living Rock, farthest from the plain, and 
pointed out the thatched roof of a cottage half-hidden on 
the mountain side; below it lay the nursery-ground of which 
Colorat had spoken. 

It was almost noon. A thin streak of smoke rising from 
the cottage chimney guided Véronique, who soon reached the 
place, but would not show herself at first. At the sight of 
the little dwelling, and the garden about it, with its fence of 
dead thorns, she stood for a few moments lost in thoughts 
known to her alone. Several acres of grass land, enclosed by 
a quickset hedge, wound away beyond the garden; the low- 
spreading branches of apple and pear and plum trees were — 
visible here and there in the field. Above the house, on the 
sandier soil of the high mountain slopes, there rose a splendid 
grove of tall chestnut trees, their topmost leaves turned yellow 
and sere. 

Mme. Graslin pushed open the crazy wicket which did duty 
as a gate, and saw before her the shed, the little yard, and all 
the picturesque and living details of the dwellings of the poor. 
Something surely of the grace of the open fields hovers about 
them. Who is there that is not moved by the revelation of 
lowly, almost vegetative lives—the clothes drying on the 
hedge, the rope of onions hanging from the roof, the iron 
cooking pots set out in the sun, the wooden bench hidden 
among the honeysuckle leaves, the houseleeks that grow on 
the ridges of almost every thatched hovel in France? 

Véronique found it impossible to appear unannounced in 
her keeper’s cottage, for two fine hunting-dogs began to bark 
as soon as they heard the rustle of her riding habit on the 
dead leaves; she gathered up her skirts on her arm, and went 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 165 


towards the house. Farrabesche and the boy were sitting on 
a wooden bench outside. Both rose to their feet and uncov- 
ered respectfully, but without a trace of servility. 

*«T have been told that you are seeing after my interests,”” 
said Véronique, with her eyes fixed on the lad; ‘‘so I deter- 
mined to see your cottage and nursery of saplings for myself, 
and to ask you about some improvements.”’ 

**T am at your service, madame,’’ replied Farrabesche. 

Véronique was admiring the lad. It was a charming face; 
somewhat sunburned and brown, but in shape a faultless oval ; 
the outlines of the forehead were delicately fine, the orange- 
colored eyes exceedingly bright and alert ; the long dark hair, 
parted on the forehead, fell upon either side of the brow. 
Taller than most boys of his age, he was very nearly five feet 
high. His trousers were of the same coarse brown linen as 
his shirt ; he wore a threadbare waistcoat of rough blue cloth 
with horn buttons, a short jacket of the material facetiously 
described as ‘‘ Maurienne velvet,’’ in which Savoyards are 
wont to dress, and a pair of iron-bound shoes on his otherwise 
bare feet to complete the costume. His father was dressed in 
the same fashion ; but instead of the little lad’s brown woolen 
cap, Farrabesche wore the wide-brimmed peasant’s hat. In 
spite of its quick intelligence, the child’s face bore the look 
of gravity (evidently unforced) peculiar to young creatures 
brought up in solitude ; he must have put himself in harmony 
with the silence and the life of the forest. Indeed, in both 
Farrabesche and hisson the physical side of their natures 
seemed to be the most highly developed ; they possessed the 
peculiar faculties of the savage—the keen sight, the alertness, 
the complete mastery of the body as an instrument, the quick 
hearing, the signs of activity and intelligent skill. No sooner 
did the boy’s eyes turn to his father than Mme. Graslin 
divined that here was the limitless affection in which the 
promptings of natural instinct and deliberate thought were 
confirmed by the most effectual happiness. 


166 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘* Is this the child of whom I have heard?’’ asked Véron- 
ique, indicating the lad. 

** Yes, madame.’’ 

Véronique signed to Farrabesche to come a few paces away. 
‘*But have you taken no steps towards finding his mother ?”’ 
she asked. 

‘Madame does not know, of course, that I am not allowed 
to go beyond the bounds of the commune where I am liv- 
ing——’”’ ; 

«« And have you never heard of her?’”’ 

‘¢ When my time was out,’’ he said, ‘‘ the commissary paid 
over to me the sum of a thousand francs, which had been 
sent me, a little at a time, every quarter; the rules would not 
allow me to have it until I came out. I thought that no one 
but Catherine would have thought of me, as it was not M. 
Bonnet who sent it; so I am keeping the money for Benja- 
min.’’ 

‘¢ And how about Catherine’s relations ?”’ 

‘‘ They thought no more about her after she went away. Be- 
sides, they did their part by looking after the child.”’ 

Véronique turned to go towards the house. 

‘* Very well, Farrabesche,’’ she said ; ‘‘I will have inquiry 
made, so as to make sure that Catherine is still living, and 
where she is, and what kind of life she is leading 

‘‘ Madame, whatever she may be, I shall look upon it as 
good fortune to have her for my wife,’’ the man cried in a 
softened tone. ‘‘It is for her to show reluctance, not for me. 
Our marriage will legitimate the poor boy, who has no suspi- 
cion yet of how he stands.’’ 

The look in the father’s eyes told the tale of the life these 
two outcasts led in their voluntary exile; they were all in all 
to each other, like two fellow-countrymen in the midst of a 
desert. 

“So you love Catherine ?’’ asked Véronique. 

‘*Tt is not so much that I love her, madame,’’ he answered, 





MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 167 


** as that, placed as I am, she is the one woman in the world 
for me.”’ 

Mme. Graslin turned swiftly, and went as far as the chestnut 
trees, as if some pang had shot through her. The keeper 
thought that this was some whim of hers, and did not ven- 
ture to follow. For nearly a quarter of an hour she sat, 
apparently engaged in looking out over the landscape. She 
could see all that part of the forest which lay along the side 
of the valley, with the torrent in the bottom ; it was dry now, 
and full of boulders, a sort of huge ditch shut in between the 
forest-covered mountains above Montégnac and another 
parallel range, these last hills being steep though low, and so 
bare that there was scarcely so much as a starveling tree here 
and there to crown the slopes, where a few rather melancholy- 
looking birches, juniper bushes, and briars were trying to 
grow. This second range belonged to a neighboring estate, 
and lay in the department of the Corréze ; indeed, the cross- 
road which meanders along the winding valley is the bound- 
ary line of the arrondissement of Montégnac, and also of the 
two estates. The opposite side of the valley beyond the tor- 
rent was quite unsheltered and barren enough. It was a sort 
of long wall with a slope of fine woodland behind it, and a 
complete contrast in its bleakness to the side of the mountain 
on which Farrabesche’s cottage stood. Gnarled and twisted 
forms on the one side, and on the other shapely growths and 
delicate curving lines ; on the one side the dreary, unchanging 
silence of a sloping desert, held in place by blocks of stone 
and bare, denuded rocks, and on the other, the contrasts of 
green among the trees. Many of them were leafless now, but 
the fine variegated tree-trunks stood up straight and tall on 
each ledge, and the branches waved as the wind stirred 
through them. A few of them, the oaks, elms, beeches, and 
chestnuts which held out longer-against the autumn than the 
rest, still retained their leaves—golden, or bronze, or purple. 

In the direction of Montégnac the valley opens out so 


168 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


widely that the two sides describe a vast horsehoe. Véronique, 
with her back against a chestnut tree, could see glen after glen 
arranged like the stages of an amphitheatre, the topmost 
crests of the trees rising one above the other in rows like the 
heads of spectators. On the other side of the ridge lay her 
own park, in which, at a later time, this beautiful hillside was 
included. Near Farrabesche’s cottage the valley grew nar- 
rower and narrower, till it closed in asa gully scarce a hun- 
dred feet across. 

The beauty of the view over which Mme, Graslin’s eyes 
wandered, heedlessly at first, soon recalled her to herself. 
She went back to the cottage, where the father and son were 
standing in silence, making no attempt to explain the strange 
departure of their mistress. Véronique looked at the house. 
It was more solidly built than the thatched.roof had led her 
to suppose; doubtless it had been left to go to ruin at the 
time when the Navarreins ceased to trouble themselves about 
the estate. No sport, no gamekeepers. But though no one 
had lived in it for a century, the walls held good in spite of 
the ivy and climbing plants which clung about them on every 
side. Farrabesche himself had thatched the roof when he 
received permission to live there; he had laid the stone-flags 
on the floor, and brought in such furniture as there was. _ 

Véronique went inside the cottage. Two beds, such as the 
peasants use, met her eyes; there was a large cupboard of 
walnut-wood, a hutch for bread, a dresser, a table, three 
chairs, a few brown earthen platters on the shelves of the 
dresser ; in fact, all the necessary household gear. A couple 
of guns and a game-bag hung above the mantle-shelf. It went 
to Véronique’s heart to see how many things the father had 
made for the little one; there was a toy man-of-war, a fishing 
smack, and a carved wooden cup, a chest wonderfully orna- 
mented, a little box decorated with mosaic work in straw, a 
beautifully-wrought crucifix and rosary. The rosary was made 
of plum-stones ; on each a head had been carved with wonder- 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 169 


ful skill—Jesus Christ, the Apostles, the Madonna, St. John 
the Baptist, St. Anne, the two Magdalens. 

**I did it to amuse the child during the long winter even- 
ings,’’ he said, with something of apology in his tone. 

Jessamine and climbing roses covered the front of the 
house, and broke into blossom about the upper windows. 
Farrabesche used the first floor as a storeroom; he kept 
poultry, ducks, and a couple of pigs, and bought nothing but 
bread, salt, sugar, and such groceries as they needed. Neither 
he nor the lad drank wine. 

‘Everything that I have seen and heard of you,’’ Mme. 
Graslin said at last, turning to Farrabesche, ‘‘ has led me to 
take an interest in you which shall not come to nothing.”’ 

‘‘This is M. Bonnet’s doing, I know right well!’’ cried 
Farrabesche with touching fervor. 

** You are mistaken ; M. le Curé has said nothing to me of 
you as yet; chance or God, it may be, has brought it all 
* about.”’ 

‘Ves, madame, it is God’s doing; God alone can work 
wonders for such a wretch as I.’’ 

‘<Tf your life has been a wretched one,’’ said Mme. Graslin, 
in tones so low that they did not reach the boy (a piece of 
womanly feeling which touched Farrabesche), ‘‘ your repent- 
ance, your conduct, and M. Bonnet’s good opinion should go 
far to retrieve it. I have given orders that the buildings on 
the large farm near the chateau which M. Graslin planned are 
to be finished ; you shall be my steward there; you will find 
scope for your energies and employment for your son. The 
public prosecutor at Limoges shall be informed of your case, 
and I will engage that the humiliating restrictions which make 
your life a burden to you shall be removed.”’ 

-Farrabesche dropped down on his knees as if thunderstruck 
at the words which opened out a prospect of the realization of 
hopes hitherto cherished in vain. He kissed the hem of Mme. 
Graslin’s riding habit ; he kissed her feet. Benjamin saw the 


? 


170 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


tears in his father’s eyes, and began to sob without knowing 
why. 

‘“‘Do not kneel, Farrabesche,’’ said Mme. Graslin; ‘* you 
do not know how natural it is that I should do for you these 
things that I have promised to do Did you not plant 
those trees?’’ she added, pointing to one or two pitch-pines, 
Norway pines, firs, and larches at the base of the arid, thirsty 
hillside opposite. 

*‘' Yes, madame.”’ 

“Then is the soil better just there? ”’ 

‘‘ The water is always wearing the rocks away, so there is a 
little light soil washed down on to your land, and I took ad- 
vantage of it, for all the valley down below the road belongs 
to you; the road is the boundary line.’’ 

‘¢ Then does a good deal of water flow down the length of 
the valley ?’”’ 

‘Oh! in a few days, madame, if the weather sets in rainy, 
you will maybe hear the roaring of the torrent over at the 
chateau! but even then it is nothing compared with what it 
will be when the snow melts. All the water from the whole 
mountain side there at the back of your park and gardens 
flows into it; in fact, all the streams hereabouts flow down to 
the torrent, and the water comes down like a deluge. Luckily 
for you, the tree-roots on your side of the valley bind the 
soil together, and the water slips off the leaves, for the fallen 
leaves here in autumn are like an oilcloth cover for the land, 
or it would all be washed down into. the valley bottom, and 
_the bed of the Corett is so steep that I doubt whether the 
soil would stop there.’ 

** What becomes of all the water ?’’ asked Mme. Greatine 

Farrabesche pointed to the gully which seemed to shut in 
the valley below his cottage. _ 

‘It pours out over a chalky bit of level ground that sepa- 
rates Limousin from the Corréze, and there it lies for several 
months in stagnant green pools, sinking slowly down into the 





MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 171 


soil. That is how the common came to be so unhealthy that 
no one lives there, and nothing can be done with it. No kind 
of cattle will pasture on the reeds and rushes in those brackish 
pools. Perhaps there are three thousand acres of it altogether; 
it is the common land of three parishes ; but it is just like the 
plain of Montégnac, you can do nothing with it. And down 
in your plain there is a certain amount of sand and a little 
soil among the flints, but here there is nothing but the bare 
tufa.”’ 

‘*Send for the horses ; I mean to see all this for myself.’’ 

Mme. Graslin told Benjamin where she had left Maurice, 
and the lad went forthwith. 

‘« They tell me that you know every yard of this country,”’ 
Mme. Graslin continued; ‘‘can you explain to me how it 
happens that no water flows into the plain of Montégnac from 
my side of the ridge? there is not the smallest torrent there 
even in rainy weather or in the time of the melting of the 
snows.’’ 

**Ah! madame,’’ Farrabesche answered, ‘‘ M. le Curé, who 
is always thinking of the prosperity of Montégnac, guessed the 
cause, but had not proof of it. Since you came here, he told 
me to mark the course of every runnel in every little valley. 
I had been looking at the lay of the land yesterday, and was 
on my way back when I had the honor of meeting you at the 
base of the Living Rock. I heard the sound of horsehoofs, 
and I wanted to know who was passing this way. Madame, 
M. Bonnet is not only a saint, he is a man of science. ‘ Far- 
rabesche,’ said he (I being at work at the time on the road 
which the commune finished up to the chateau for you)— 
‘Farrabesche, if no water from this side of the hill reaches 
the plain below, it must be because nature has some sort of 
drainage arrangement for carrying it off elsewhere.’ Well, 
madame, the remark is so simple that it looks downright trite, 
as if any child might have made it. But nobody since Mon- 
tégnac was Montégnac, neither great lords, nor stewards, nor 


172 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


keepers, nor rich, nor poor, though the plain lay there before 
their eyes with nothing growing on it for want of water, 
not one of them ever thought of asking what became of the 
water in the Gabou. The stagnant water gives them the fever 
in three communes, but they never thought of looking for the 
remedy ; and I myself never dreamed of it ; it took a man of 
God to see that “ 

Farrabesche’s eyes filled with tears as he spoke. 

‘‘The discoveries of men of genius are all so simple, that 
every one thinks he could have found them out,’’ said Mme. 
Graslin ; and to herself she added, ‘‘ But there is this grand 
thing about genius, that while it is akin to all others, no one 
resembles it.’’ 

*¢ At once I saw what M. Bonnet meant,’’ Farrabesche went 
on. ‘‘ He had not to use a lot of long words to explain my 
job tome. To make the thing all the queerer, madame, all 
the ridge above your plain (for it all belongs to you) is full 
of pretty deep cracks, ravines, and gullies, and whatnot; but 
all the water that flows down the valleys, clefts, ravines, and 
gorges, every channel, in fact, empties itself into a little valley 
a few feet lower than the level of your plain, madame. I 
know the cause of this state of things to-day, and here it is: 
There is a sort of embankment of rock (schist, M. Bonnet 
calls it) twenty or thirty feet thick, which runs in an unbroken 
line all round the bases of the hills between Montégnac and 
the Living Rock. The earth being softer than the stone, has 
been worn away and been hollowed out; so, naturally the 
water all flows round into the Gabou, eating its passage out 
of each valley. The trees and thickets and brushwood hide 
the lay of the land ; but when you follow the streams and track 
their passage, it is easy to convince yourself of the facts. In 
this way both hillsides drain into the Gabou, all the water from 
this side that we see, and the other over the ridge where your 
park lies, as well as from the rocks opposite. M. le Curé 
thinks that this state of things would work its own cure when 





“MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 173 
the water-courses on your side of the ridge are blocked up at 
the mouth by the rocks and soil washed down from above, so 
that they raise barriers between themselves and the Gabou. 
When that time comes your plain will be flooded in turn like 
the common land you are just about to see; but it would take 
hundreds of years to bring that about. And, besides, is it a 
thing to wish for, madame? Suppose that your plain of 
Montégnac should not suck up all that water, like the common 
land here, there would be some more standing pools there to 
poison the whole country.”’ 

**So the places M. le Curé pointed out to me a few days 
ago, where the trees are still green, must mark the natural 
channels through which the water flows down into the Gabou?”’ 

‘Yes, madame. There are three hills between the Living 
Rock and Montégnac, and consequently there are three water- 
courses, and the streams that flow down them, banked in by 
the schist barrier, turn to the Gabou, That belt of wood still 
green, round the base of the hills, looks as if it were part of 
your plain, but it marks the course of the channel which was 
there, as M. le Curé guessed it would be.”’ 

‘* The misfortune will soon turn to a blessing for Mon- 
tégnac,’’ said Mme. Graslin, with deep conviction in her 
tones. ‘And since you have been the first instrument, you 
shall share in the work; you shall find active and willing 
workers, for hard work and perseverance must make up for the 
money which we lack.’’ 

Mme. Graslin had scarcely finished the sentence when Ben- 
jamin and Maurice came up; she caught at her horse’s bridle, 
and, by a gesture, bade Farrabesche mount Maurice’s horse. 

*‘Now bring me to the place where the water drowns the 
common land,’’ she said. 

*«Tt will be so much the better that you should go, madame, 
since that the late M. Graslin, acting on M. Bonnet’s advice, 
bought about three hundred acres of land at the mouth of the 
gully where the mud has been deposited by the torrent, so 


174 THE COUNTRY PARSON, 


that over a certain area there is some depth of rich soil. 
Madame will see the other side of the Living Rock ; there is 
some magnificent timber there, and doubtless M. Graslin 
would have had a farm on the spot. The best situation would 
be a place where the little stream that rises near my house 
sinks into the ground again; it might be turned to advan- 
tage.” | 

Farrabesche led the way, and Véronique followed down a 
steep path towards a spot where the two sides of the gully 
drew in, and then separated sharply to east and west, as if 
divided by some earthquake shock. The gully was about sixty 
feet across. Tall grasses were growing among the huge 
boulders in the bottom. On the one side the Living Rock, 
cut to the quick, stood up a solid surface of granite without 
the slightest flaw in it; but the height of the uncompromising 
rock-wall was crowned with the overhanging roots of trees, 
for the pines clutched the soil with their branching roots, 
seeming to grasp the granite as a bird clings to a bough; but 
on the other side the rock was yellow and sandy, and hollowed 
out by the weather: there was no depth in the caverns, no 
boldness in the hollows of the soft crumbling ochre-tinted 
rock. A few prickly-leaved plants, burdocks, reeds, and 
water-plants at its base were sufficient signs of a north aspect 
and poor soil. Evidently the two ranges, though parallel, and 
as it were blended at the time of the great cataclysm which 
changed the surface of the globe, were composed of entirely 
different materials—an inexplicable freak of nature, or the 
result of some unknown cause which waits for genius to dis- 
cover it. In this place the contrast between them was most 
strikingly apparent. 

Véronique saw in front of her a vast dry plateau. There 
was no sign of plant-life anywhere ; the chalky soil explained 
the infiltration of the water, only a few stagnant pools 
remained here and there where the surface was incrusted. To 
the right stretched the mountains of the Corréze, and to the 








MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 1% 


left the eye was arrested by the huge mass of the Living Rock, 
the tall jor-st trees that clothed its sides, and two hundred 
acres of grass below the forest, in strong contrast with the 
ghastly solitude about them. 

** My son and I made the ditch that you see down yonder,” 
said Farrabesche ; ‘‘ you can see it by the line of tall grass ; it 
will be connected shortly with the ditch that marks the edge 
of your forest. Your property is bounded on this side by a 
desert, for the first village lies a league away.”’ 

Véronique galloped into the hideous plain, and her keeper 
followed. She cleared the ditch and rode at full speed across 
the dreary waste, seeming to take a kind of wild delight in the 
vast picture of desolation before her. Farrabesche was right. 
No skill, no human power could turn that soil to account, the 
ground rang hollow beneath the horse’s hoofs. This was a 
result of the porous nature of the tufa, but there were cracks 
and fissures no less through which the flood-water sank out of 
sight, doubtless to feed some far-off springs. 

«And yet there are souls like this! ’’ Véronique exclaimed 
within herself as she reined in her horse, after a quarter of an 
hour’s gallop. 

She mused a while with the desert all about her; there was 
no living creature, no animal, no .insect ; birds never crossed 
the plateau. In the plain of Montégnac there were.at any rate 
the flints, a little sandy or clayey soil, and crumbled rock to 
make a thin crust of earth a few inches deep as a begin- 
ning for cultivation; but here the ungrateful tufa, which 
had ceased to be earth, and had not become stone, wearied 
the eyes so cruelly that they were absolutely forced to turn 
for relief to the illimitable ether of space. Véronique 
looked along the boundary of her forests and at the meadow 
which her husband had added to the estate, then she went 
slowly back towards the mouth of the Gabou. She came 
suddenly upon Farrabesche, and found him looking intoa 
hole, which might have suggested that some one of a specu- 


176 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


lative turn had been probing this unlikely spot, imagining that 
nature had hidden some treasure there. 

‘¢ What is it?’’ asked Véronique, noticing the deep sadness 
of the expression on the manly face. 

‘* Madame, I owe my life to this trench here, or, more 
properly, I owe to it a space for repentance and time to re- 
deem my faults in the eyes of men a 

The effect of this explanation of life was to nail Mme. 
Graslin to the spot. She reined in her horse. 

**T used to hide here, madame. The ground is so full of 
echoes, that if I laid my ear to the earth I could catch the 
sound of the horses of the gendarmerie or the tramp of sol- 
diers (an unmistakable sound that !) more than a league away. 
Then I used to escape by way of the Gabou. I had a horse 
ready in a place there, and I always put five or six leagues 
between myself and them that were after me. Catherine used 
to bring me food of a night. If she did not find any sign 
of me, I always found bread and wine left in a hole covered 
over by a stone.”’ 

These recollections of his wild vagrant life, possibly un- 
wholesome recollections for Farrabesche, stirred Véronique’s 
most indulgent pity, but she rode rapidly on towards the 
Gabou, followed by the keeper. While she scanned the gap, 
looking down the long valley, so fertile on one side, so forlorn 
on the other, and saw, more than a league away, the hillside 
ridges, tier on tier, at the back of Montégnac, Farrabesche 
said, ‘‘ There will be famous waterfalls here in a few days.’ 

‘‘And by the same day next year, not a drop of water will 
ever pass that way again. I am on my own property on 
either side, so I shall build a wall solid enough and high 
enough to keep the water in. Instead of a valley which is 
doing nothing, I shall have a lake, twenty, thirty, forty, or 
fifty feet deep, and about a league across—a vast reservoir for 
the irrigation channels that shall fertilize the whole plain of 
Montégnac.”’ 





MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 177 


<M. le Curé was right, madame, when he told us, as 
we were finishing your road, that we were working for 
our mother; may God give his blessing to such an enter- 
prise.’’ 

«Say nothing about it, Farrabesche,’’ said Mme. Graslin; 
“it is M. Bonnet’s idea.”’ 

Véronique returned to Farrabesche’s cottage, found Mau- 
rice, and went back at once to the chateau. Her mother and 
Aline were surprised at the change in her face; the hope of 
doing good to the country had given it a look of something 
like happiness. Mme. Graslin wrote to M. Grossetéte; she 
wanted him to ask M. de Granville for complete liberty for 
the poor convict, giving particulars as to his good conduct, 
which was further vouched for by the mayor’s certificate and 
a letter from M. Bonnet. She also sent other particulars con- 
cerning Catherine Curieux, and entreated Grossetéte to interest 
the public prosecutor in her kindly project, and to cause a 
letter to be written to the prefecture of police in Paris with a 
view to discovering the girl. The mere fact that Catherine 
had remitted sums of money to the convict in prison should 
be a sufficient clue by which to trace her. Véronique had set 
her heart on knowing the reason why Catherine had failed to 
come back to her child and to Farrabesche. Then she told 
her old friend of her discoveries in the torrent bed of the 
Gabou, and laid stress on the necessity of finding the clever 
man for whom she had already asked him. 

The next day was Sunday. For the first time since Véro- 
nique took up her abode in Montégnac, she felt able to go to 
church for mass. She went and took possession of her pew 
in the Lady Chapel. Looking round her, she saw how bare . 
the poverty-stricken church was, and determined to set by a 
certain sum every year for repairs and the decoration of the 
altars. She heard the words of the priest, tender, gracious, 
and divine; for the sermon, couched in such simple language 
that all present could understand it, was in truth sublime. 

12 


Me 


178 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


The sublime comes from the heart; it is not to be found by 
effort of the intellect ; and religion is an inexhaustible source 
of sublime thoughts with no false glitter of brilliancy, for the 
catholicism which penetrates and changes hearts is wholly of 
the heart. M. Bonnet found in the epistle a text for his 
sermon, to the effect that soon or late God fulfills his prom- 
ises, watches over his own, and encourages the good. He 
made it clear that great things would be the result of the 
presence of a rich and charitable resident in the parish, by 
pointing out that the duties of the poor towards the beneficent 
rich were as extensive as those of the rich towards the poor, 
and that the relation should be one of mutual help. 

Farrabesche had spoken to some of those who were glad to 
see him (one consequence of the spirit of Christian charity 
which M. Bonnet had infused into practical action in his 
parish), and had told them of Mme. Graslin’s kindness to 
him. All the commune had talked this over in the square 
below the church, where, according to country custom, they 
gathered together before mass. Nothing could more com- 
pletely have won the good-will of these folk, who are so readily 
touched by any kindness shown to them; and when Véron- 
ique came out of church she found almost all the parish 
standing in a double row. All hats went off respectfully and 
in deep silence as she passed. This welcome touched her, 
though she did not know the real reason of it. Among the 
last of all she saw Farrabesche, and spoke to him. 

‘*You are a good sportsman; do not forget to send us 
some game.”’ 

A few days after this Véronique walked with the curé in 
that part of the forest nearest her chateau ; she determined to 
descend the ridges which she had seen from the Living Rock, 
ranged tier on tier on the other side of the hill. With the 
curé’s assistance she would ascertain the exact position of the 
higher affluents of the Gabou. The result was the discovery 
by the curé of the fact that the streams which water Upper 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MUNTEGNAC. 179 


Montégnac really rose in the mountains of the Corréze. 
These ranges were united to the mountain by the arid rib of 
hill which ran parallel to the chain of the Living Rock. 
The curé came back from that walk with boyish glee; he 
saw, with the zaiveté of a poet, the prosperity of the village 
that he loved. And what is a poet but a man who realizes his 
dreams before the time? M. Bonnet reaped his harvests as he 
looked down from the terrace at the barren plain. 

Farrabesche and his son came up to the chateau next morn- 
ing loaded with game. The keeper had brought a cup for 
Francis Graslin ; it was nothing less than a masterpiece—a 
battle-scene carved on a cocoanut shell. Mme. Graslin 
happened to be walking qn the terrace, on the side that over- 
looked ‘‘ Tascherons.’’ She sat down on a garden seat, and 
looked long at that fairy’s work. Tears came into her eyes 
from time to time. 

** You must have been very unhappy,”’ she said, addressing 
Farrabesche after a silence. 

**What could I do, madame?’”’ he answered. ‘‘I was 
there without the hope of escape, which makes life bearable 
to almost all the convicts a 

‘It is an appalling life!’’ she said, and her look and com- 
passionate tones invited Farrabesche to speak. 

In Mme. Graslin’s convulsive tremor and evident emotion 
Farrabesche saw nothing but the overwrought interest excited 
by pitying curiosity. Just at that moment Mme. Sauviat 
appeared in one of the garden walks, and seemed about to 
join them, but Véronique drew out her handkerchief and 
motioned her away. ‘‘ Let me be, mother,’’ she cried, in 
sharper tones than she had ever before used to the old 
Auvergnate, 

‘¢ For five years I wore a chain riveted here to a heavy iron 
ring, madame,’’ Farrabesche said, pointing to his leg. ‘I 
was fastened to another man. I have had to live like that 
with three convicts first and last. I used to lie on a wooden 





180 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


camp bedstead, and I had to work uncommonly hard to get a 
thin mattress, called a serpentin. There were eight hundred 
men in each ward. Each of the beds (Zo/ards, they called 
them) held twenty-four men, all chained together two and 
two, and nights and mornings they passed a long chain called 
the ‘ bilboes string,’ in and out of the chains that bound each 
couple together, and made it fast to the “o/ard, so that all of 
us were fastened down by the feet. Even after a couple of 
years of it,.I could not get used to the clank of those chains ; 
every moment they said, ‘ You are in a convicts’ prison !’ 
If you dropped off to sleep for a minute, some rogue or other 
would begin to wrangle or turn himself round, and put you in 
mind of your plight. You had to serve an apprenticeship to 
learn how to sleep. I could not sleep at all, in fact, unless I 
was utterly exhausted with a heavy day’s work. 

** After I managed to sleep, I had, at any rate, the night 
when I could forget things. Forgetfulness—that is something, 
madame! Once a man is there, he must learn to satisfy his 
needs after a manner fixed by the most pitiless rules. You 
can judge, madame, what sort of effect this life was like to 
have on me, a young fellow who had always lived in the 
woods, like the wild goats and the birds! Ah! if I had not 
eaten my bread cooped up in the four walls of a prison for six 
months beforehand, I should have thrown myself into the sea 
at the sight of my mates, for all the beautiful things M. 
Bonnet said, and (I may say it) he has been the father of my 
soul. I did pretty well in the open air ; but when once I was 
shut up in the ward to sleep or eat (for we ate our food there 
out of troughs, three couples to each trough), it took all the 
life out of me; the dreadful faces and the language of the 
others always sickened me. Luckily, at five o’clock in the 
summer, and half-past seven in winter, out we went in spite 
of heat or cold or wind or rain, in the ‘ jail gang’—that 
means to work. So we were out of doors most of our time, 
and the open air seems very good to you when you come out” 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 181 


of a place where eight hundred convicts herd together. The 
air, you must always remember, is sea-air! You enjoy the 
breeze, the sun is like a friend, and you watch the clouds pass 
over, and look for hopeful signs of a beautiful day. For my. 
own part, I took an interest in my work.”’ 

Farrabesche stopped, for two great tears rolled down Vér- 
onique’s cheeks. 

‘Oh! madame, these are only the roses of that exist- 
ence!’’ he cried, taking the expression on Mme. Graslin’s 
face for pity of his lot. ‘* These are the dreadful precautions 
the government takes to make sure of us, the inquisition kept 
up by the warders, the inspection of fetters morning and 
evening, the coarse food, the hideous clothes that humiliate 
you at every moment, the constrained position while you 
sleep, the frightful sound of four hundred double chains 
clanking in an echoing ward, the prospect of being mowed 
down with grapeshot if half-a-dozen scoundrels take it into 
their heads to rebel—all these horrible things are nothing, 
they are the roses of that life, as I said before. Any respect- 
able man unlucky enough to be sent there must die of disgust 
before very long. You have to live day and night with 
another convict ; you have to endure the company of five 
more at every meal, and twenty-three at night ; you have to 
listen to their talk. 

‘« The convicts have secret laws among themselves, madame ; 
if you make an outlaw of yourself, they will murder you; if 
you submit, you becomea murderer. You have your choice— 
you must be either victim or executioner. After all, if you 
die at a blow, that would put an end to you and your 
troubles; but they are too cunning in wickedness, it is 
impossible to hold out against their hatred: any one whom 
they dislike is completely at their mercy, they can make every 
moment of his life one constant torture worse than death. 
Any man who repents and tries to behave well is the common 
enemy, and more particularly they suspect him of tale-telling, 


182 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


They will take a man’s life on a mere suspicion of tale-telling. 
Every ward has its tribunal, where they try crimes against the 
convicts’ laws. It is an offense not to conform to their 
customs, and a man may be punished for that. For instance, 
everybody is bound to help the escape of a convict; every 
convict has his chance of escape in turn, when the whole 
prison is bound to give him help and protection. It isa 
crime to reveal anything done by a convict to further his 
escape. I will not speak of the horrible moral tone of the 
prison ; strictly speaking, it has nothing to do with the sub- 
ject. The prison authorities chain men of opposite disposi- 
tions together, so as to neutralize any attempt at escape or re- 
bellion ; and always put those who either could not endure 
each other, or were suspicious of each other, on the same 
chain.’’ 

*¢ What did you do?’”’ asked Mme. Graslin. 

‘‘Oh! it was like this, I had luck,’’ said Farrabesche ; 
‘the lot never fell to me to kill a doomed man; I never 
voted the death of anybody, no matter whom; I was never 
punished, no one took a dislike to me, and I lived comfort- 
ably with the three mates they gave me one after another—all 
three of them feared and liked me. But then I was well 
known in the prison before I got there, madame. A 
chauffeur / for I was supposed to be one of those brigands. 
I have seen them do it,’’ Farrabesche went on in a low voice, 
after a pause, ‘“‘ but I never would help to torture folk, nor 
take any of the stolen money. I was a ‘ refractory conscript,’ 
that was all. I used to help the rest, I was scout for them, I 
fought, I was forlorn sentinel, rearguard, what you will, but I 
never shed blood except in self-defense. Oh! I told M. 
Bonnet and my lawyer everything, and the judges knew quite 
well that I wasnot amurderer. But, all the same, Iam a great 
criminal; the things that I have done are all against the law. 

‘*Two of my old comrades had told them about me before 
Icame. Iwas a man of whom the greatest things might be 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 183 


expected, they said. In the convicts’ prison, you see, madame, 
there is nothing like a character of that kind ; it is worth even 
more than money. A murder is a passport in this republic of 
wretchedness ; they leave you in peace. I did nothing to 
destroy their opinion of me. I looked gloomy and resigned ; 
it was possible to be misled by my face, and they were misled. 
My sullen manner and my silence were taken for signs of 
ferocity. Every one there, convicts and warders, young and 
old, respected me. I was president of my ward. I was never 
tormented at night, nor suspected of tale-telling. I lived 
honestly according to their rules; I never refused to do any 
one a good turn; I never showed a sign of disgust ; in short, 
I ‘howled with the wolves,’ to all appearance, and in my 
secret soul I prayed to God. My last mate was a soldier, a 
lad of two-and-twenty, who had stolen something, and then 
deserted in consequence ; I had him for four years. We were 
friends, and wherever I may be I can reckon on Azm when he 
comes out. The poor wretch, Guépin they called him, was 
not a rascal, he was only a harebrained boy; his ten years 
will sober him down. Oh! if the rest had known that it was 
religion that reconciled me to my fate; that when my time 
was up I meant to live in some corner without letting them 
know where I was, to forget those fearful creatures, and never 
to be in the way of meeting one of them again, they would 
very likely have driven me mad.”’ 

‘« But, then, suppose that some unhappy, sensitive boy had 
been carried away by passion, and—pardoned so far as the 
death penalty is concerned Bee 

“< Madame, a murderer is never fully pardoned. They be- 
gin by commuting the sentence for twenty years of penal ser- 
vitude. But for a decent young fellow it is a thing to shudder 
at! It is impossible to teil you about the life in store for him ; 
it would be a hundred times better for him that he should 
die! Yes, for such a death on the scaffold is good fortune.” 

*¢ I did not dare to think it,’’ said Mme. Graslin. 





184 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Véronique had grown white as wax. She leaned her fore 
head against the balustrade to hide her face for several mo- 
ments. Farrabesche did not know whether he ought to go 
or stay. Then Mme. Graslin rose to her feet, and with an 
almost queenly look she said, to Farrabesche’s great astonish- 
ment, ‘‘ Thank you, my friend!’’ in tones that went to his 
heart. Then after a pause—‘‘ Where did you draw courage 
to live and suffer as you did ?’’ she asked. 

‘*¢ Ah, madame, M. Bonnet had set a treasure in my soul! 
That is why I love him more than I have ever loved any one 
else in this world.”’ 

‘*More than Catherine ?’’ asked Mme. Graslin, with a 
certain bitterness in her smile. 

‘¢ Ah, madame, almost as much.”’ 

‘¢ How did he do it ?”’ 

‘Madame, the things that he said and the tones of his 
voice subdued me. It was Catherine who showed him the 
way to the hiding-place in the chalk-land which I showed you 
the other day. He came to me quite alone. He was the new 
curé of Montégnac, he told me; I was his parishioner, I was 
dear to him, he knew that I had only strayed from the path, 
that I was not yet lost ; he did not mean to betray me, but to 
save me; in fact, he said things that thrill you to the very 
depths of your nature. And you see, madame, he can make 
you do right with all the force that other people take to make 
you do wrong. He told me, poor dear man, that Catherine 
was a mother ; I was about to give over two creatures to shame 
and neglect. ‘Very well,’ said I, ‘then they will be just as 
Iam; I have no future before me.’ He answered that I had 
two futures before me, and both of them bad—one in this 
world, the other in the next—unless I desisted and reformed. 
Here below I was bound to die.on the scaffold. If I were 
caught, my defense would break down in a court of law. 
On the other hand, if I took advantage of the mildness of the 
new government towards ‘refractory conscripts’ of many 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 185 


years’ standing, and gave myself up, he would strain every 
nerve to save my life. He would find mea clever advocate 
who would pull me through with ten years’ penal servitude. 
After that M. Bonnet talked to me of another life. Catherine 
cried like a Magdalen at that. There, madame,”’ said Farra- 
besche, holding out his right hand, ‘‘ she laid her face against 
this, and I felt it quite wet with her tears. She prayed me 
to live! M. le Curé promised to contrive a quiet and happy 
lot for me and my child, even in this district, and undertook 
that no one should cast up the past to me. In short, he lec- 
tured me as if I had been a little boy. After three of those 
nightly visits I was as pliant as a glove. Do you care to 
know why, madame ?’’ 

Farrabesche and Mme. Graslin looked at each other, and 
neither of them to their secret souls explained the real motive 
of their mutual curiosity. 

** Very well,’’ the poor ticket-of-leave man continued, ‘‘ the 
first time when he had gone away, and Catherine went, too, 
to show him the way back, and I was left alone, I felt a kind 
of freshness and calm happiness such as I had not known 
since I was a child. It was something like the happiness I 
had felt with poor Catherine. The love of this dear man, 
who had come to seek me out, the interest that he took in me, 
in my future, in my soul—it all worked upon me and changed 
me. It was as if alight arose in me. So long as he was with 
me and talked, I held out. How couldI help it? He wasa 
priest, and we bandits do not eat their bread. But when the 
sound of his footsteps and Catherine’s died away—oh! I was, 
as he said two days later, ‘ enlightened. by grace.’ 

‘‘From that time forwards God gave me strength to 
endure everything—the jail, the sentence, the putting on of 
the irons, the journey, the life in the convicts’ prison. I 
reckoned upon M. Bonnet’s promise as upon the truth of the 
Gospel ; I looked on my sufferings as a payment of arrears. 
Whenever things grew unbearable, I used to see, at the end 


186 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


of the ten years, this house in the woods, and my little Ben- 
jamin and Catherine there. Good M. Bonnet, he kept his 
promise ; but some one else failed me. Catherine was not at 
the prison-door when I came out, nor yet at the trysting-place 
on the common lands. She must have died of grief. That is 
why I am always sad. Now, thanks to you, madame, I shall 
have work to do that needs doing; I shall put myself into it 
body and soul, so will my boy for whom I live e ' 

‘¢You have shown me how it was that M. le Curé could 
bring about the changes in his parish nr 

‘¢Oh! nothing can resist him,’’ said Farrabesche. 

‘¢No, no. I know that,’’ Véronique answered briefly, and 
she very kindly dismissed the grateful Farrabesche with a sign 
of farewell. 

Farrabesche went. Most of that day Véronique spent in 
pacing to and fro along the terrace, in spite of the drizzling 
rain that fell till evening came on. She was gloomy and sad. 
When Véronique’s brows were thus contracted, neither her 
mother nor Aline dared to break in on her mood ; she did not 
see her mother talking in the dusk with M. Bonnet, who, 
seeing that she must be roused from this-appalling dejection, 
sent the child to find her. Little Francis went up to his 
mother and took her hand, and Véronique suffered herself to 
be led away. At the sight of M. Bonnet she started with 
something almost like dismay. The curé led the way back to 
the terrace. _ 

‘¢ Well, madame,”’ he said, ‘‘ what can you have been talk- 
ing about with Farrabesche ? ”’ 

Véronique did not wish to lie nor to answer the question ; 
she replied to it by another— 

‘¢ Was he your first victory ?”’ 

‘¢ Yes,’’ said M. Bonnet. ‘If I could win him, I felt sure 
of Montégnac; and so it proved.”’ 

Véronique pressed M. Bonnet’s hand. 

«¢ From to-day I am your penitent, M. le Curé,’’ she said, 








MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 187 


with tears in her voice; ‘‘to-morrow | will make you a 
general confession.”’ 

The last words plainly spoke of a great inward struggle and 
a hardly-won victory over herself. The curé led the way back 
to the chAteau without a word, and stayed with her till dinner, 
talking over the vast improvements to be made in Montégnac. 

‘* Agriculture is a question of time,’’ he said. ‘‘ The little 
* that I know about it has made me to understand how much 
may be done by a well-spent winter. Here are the rains 
beginning, you see; before long the mountains will be 
covered with snow, and your operations will be impossible ; 
so hurry M. Grossetéte.”’ 

M. Bonnet exerted himself to talk, and drew Aihe: Graslin 
into the conversation ; gradually her thoughts were forced to 
take another turn, and by the time he left her she had almost 
recovered from the day’s excitement. But even so, Mme. 
Sauviat saw that her daughter was so terribly agitated that she 
spent the night with her. 

Two days later a messenger sent by M. Grossetéte arrived 
with the following letters for Mme. Graslin: 


Grossetéte to Mme. Graslin. 


‘¢ My DEAR CuiILp:—Horses are not easily to be found, but 
I hope that you are satisfied with the three which I sent you. 
If you need draught-horses or plough-horses, they must be 
looked for elsewhere. It is better in any case to use oxen for 
ploughing and as draught animals. In all districts where 
they use horses on the land, they lose their capital as soon as 
the animal is past work, while an ox, instead of being a loss, 
yields a profit to the farmer. 

‘‘T approve of your enterprise in every respect, my child ; 
you will find in it an outlet for the devouring mental energy 
which was turned against yourself and wearing you out. But 
when you asked me to find you, over and above the horses, a 


188 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


man able to second you, and more particularly to enter into 
your views, you ask me for one of those rare birds that we 
rear it is true in the provinces, but which we in no case keep 
among us. The training of the noble animal is too lengthy 
and too risky a speculation for us to undertake, and, besides, 
we are afraid of these very clever folk—‘ eccentrics,’ we call 
them. 

‘© As a matter of fact, too, the men who are classed in the 
scientific category in which you are fain to find a co-operator 
are, as rule, so prudent and so well provided for, that I hardly 
liked to write to tell you how impossible it would be to come 
by such a prize. You ask me for a poet, or, if you prefer 
it, a madman ; but all our madmen betake themselves to Paris. 
I did speak to one or two young fellows engaged on the land 
survey and assessments, contractors for embankments, or fore- 
men employed on canal cuttings; but none of them thought 
it worth their while to entertain your proposals. Chance all at 
once threw in my way the very man you want, a young man 
whom I thought to help; for you will see by his letter that 
one ought not to set about doing a kindness in a happy-go- 
lucky fashion, and, indeed, an act of kindness’ requires more 
thinking about than anything else on this earth. You can 
never tell whether what seemed to you to be right at the time 
may not do harm byand by. By helping others we shape our 
own destinies ; I see that now——’’ 


As Mme. Graslin read those words, the letter dropped from 
her hands. For some moments she sat deep in thought. 

‘© Oh, God,’’ she cried, ‘‘when wilt Thou cease to smite 
me by every man’s hand ?”’ 

Then she picked up the letters and read on— 


‘¢ Gérard seems to me to have plenty of enthusiasm and a 
cool head ; the very man for you! Paris is in,a ferment just 
now with this leavén of new doctrine, and I shall be delighted 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 189 


if the young fellow keeps out of the snares spread by ambi- 
tious spirits, who work upon the instincts of the generous youth 
_ of France. The rather torpid existence of the provinces is 
not altogether what I like for him, but neither do I like the 
idea of the excitement of the life in Paris, and the enthusiasm 
for renovating, which urges youngsters into the new ways. 
You, and you only, know my opinions; to me it seems that 
the world of ideas revolves on its axis much as the material 
world does. Here is this poor protégé of mine wanting im- 
possibilities. No power on earth could stand before ambitions 
so violent, imperious, and absolute. I have a liking myself 
fora jog trot; I like to goslowly in politics, and have but very 
little taste for the social topsy-turvydom which all these lofty 
spirits are minded to inflict upon us. To you I confide the 
principles of an old and trusted supporter of the Monarchy, 
for you are discreet. I hold my tongue here among these 
good folk, who believe more and more in progress the farther 
they get into a mess; but for all that it hurts me to see the 
irreparable damage done already to our dear country. 

‘* So I wrote and told the young man that a task worthy of 
him was waiting for him here. He is coming to see you; for 
though his letter (which I enclose) will give you a very fair 
idea of him, you would like to see him as well, would you not ? 
You women can tell so much from the look of people; and, 
besides, you ought not to have any one, however insignificant, 
in your service unless you like him. If he is not the man 
you want, you can decline his services; but if he suits you, 
dear child, cure him of his flimsily-disguised ambitions, induce 
him to adopt the happy and peaceful life of the fields, a life 
in which beneficence is perpetual, where all the qualities of 
a great and strong nature are continually brought into play, 
where the products of nature are a daily source of new wonder, 
and a man finds worthy occupation in making a real advance 
and practical improvements. Ido not in any way overlook 
the fact that great deeds come of great ideas—great theories ; 


190 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


but as ideas of that kind are seldom met with, I think that, 
for the most part, practical attainments are worth more than 
ideas. A man who brings a bit of land into cultivation or a 
tree or fruit to perfection, who makes grass grow where grass 
would not grow before, ranks a good deal higher than the 
seeker after formulas for humanity. In what has Newton’s 
science changed the lot of the worker in the fields? Ah! my 
dear, I loved you before, but to-day, appreciating to the full 
the task which you have set before you, I love you far more. 
You are not forgotten here in Limoges. and every one admires 
your great resolution of improving Montégnac. Give us our 
little due, in that we have the wit to admire nobility when we 
see it, and do not forget that the first of your admirers is also 


your earliest friend. 2 
‘¢F, GROSSETETE.”’ 


Gérard to Grossetéte. : 


‘‘I come to you, monsieur, with sad confidences, but you 
have been like a father to me, when you might have been 
simply a patron. So to you alone, who have made me any- 
thing that Iam, can I make them. I have fallen a victim to 
a cruel disease, a disease, moreover, not of the body; I am 
conscious that I am completely unfitted by my thoughts, feel- 
ings, and opinions, and by the whole bent of my mind, to do 
what is expected of me by the government and by society. 
Perhaps this will seem to you to be a piece of ingratitude, but 
it is simply and solely an indictment that I address to you. 

‘¢ When I was twelve years old you saw the signs of a certain 
aptitude for the exact sciences, and a precocious ambition to 
succeed, in a workingman’s son, and it was through you, my 
generous godfather, that I took my flight towards higher 
spheres ; but for youI should be following out my original 
destiny, I should be a carpenter like my poor father, who did 
not live to rejoice in my success. And most surely, monsieur, 
you did me a kindness ; there is no day on which I do not 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 191 


bless you; and so, perhaps, it is I who am in the wrong. But 
whether right or wrong, I am unhappy ; and does not the fact 
that I pour out my complaints to you set you very high? Is 
it not as if I made of you a supreme judge, like God? In 
any case, I trust to your indulgence. 

**T studied the exact sciences so hard between the ages of 
sixteen and eighteen that I made myself ill, as you know. 
My whole future depended on my admission to the Ecole 
Polytechnique. The work I did at that time was a dispropor- 
tionate training for the intellect; I all but killed myself; I 
studied day and night; I exerted myself to do more than I 
was perhaps fit for. Iwas determined to pass my examina- 
tions so well that I should be sure not only of admittance into 
the Ecole, but of a free education there, for I wanted to spare 
you the expense, and I succeeded ! 

*«It makes me shudder now to think of that appalling con- 
scription of brains yearly made over to the government by 
family ambition ; a conscription which demands such severe 
study at a time when a lad is almost a man, and growing 
fast in every way, cannot but do incalculable mischief; 
many precious faculties which later would have developed 
and grown strong and powerful are extinguished by the light 
of the student’s lamp. Nature’s laws are inexorable; they 
are not to be thrust aside by the schemes nor at the pleasure 
of society; and the laws of the physical world, the laws 
which govern the nature without, hold good no less of 
human nature—every abuse must be paid for. If you must 
have fruit out of season, you have it from a forcing house 
either at the expense of the tree or of the quality of the 
fruit. La Quintinie killed the orange trees that Louis XIV. 
might have a bouquet of orange blossoms every morning 
throughout the year. Any heavy demand made on a still- 
growing intellect is a draft on its future. 

‘¢The pressing and special need of our age is the spirit of 
the lawgiver. Europe has so far seen no lawgiver since Jesus 


192 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Christ; and Christ, who gave us no vestige of a political 
code, left His work incomplete. For example, before tech- 
nical schools were established, and the present means of filling 
them with scholars was adopted, did they call in one of the 
great thinkers who hold in their heads the immensity of the 
sum of the relations of the institution to human brain-power ; 
who can balance the advantages and disadvantages, and study 
in the past the laws of the future? Was any inquiry made 
into the after-lives of men who, for their misfortune, knew 
the circle of the sciences at too early an age? Was any esti- 
mate of their rarity attempted? Was their fate ascertained ? 
Was it discovered how they contrived to endure the continual 
strain of thought? How many of them died like Pascal, 
prematurely, worn out by science? Some, again, lived to 
old age; when did these begin their studies? Was it known 
then, is it known now as I write, what conformation of the 
brain is best fitted to stand the strain and to cope prematurely 
with knowledge? Is it so much as suspected that this is before 
all things a physiological question ? 

‘‘Well, I think myself that the general rule is that the 
vegetative period of adolescence should be prolonged. There 
are exceptions; there are some so constituted that they are 
capable of this effort in youth, but the result is the shortening 
of life in most cases. Clearly the man of genius who can 
stand the precocious exercise of his faculties is bound to be an 
exception among exceptions. If medical testimony and social 
data bear me out, our way of recruiting for the technical 
schools in France works as much havoc among the best human 
specimens of each generation as La Quintinie’s process among 
the orange trees. : 

‘*But to continue (for I will append my doubts to each 
series of facts), F began my work anew at the Ecole, and with 
more enthusiasm than ever. I meant to leave it as success- 
fully as I had entered it. Between the ages of nineteen and 
one-and-twenty I worked with all my might, and developed 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 193 


my faculties by their constant exercise. Those two years set 
the crown on the three which came before them, when I was 
only preparing to do great things. And then, what pride did 
I not feel when I had won the privilege of-choosing the career 
most to my mind? I might be a military or marine engineer, 
might go on the staff of the artillery, into the mines depart- 
ment, or the roads and bridges. I took your advice, and 
became a civil engineer. 

‘© Yet where I triumphed, how many fell out of the ranks! 
You know that from year to year the government raises the 
standard of the Ecole. The work grows harder and more 
trying from time to time. The course of preparatory study 
through which I went was nothing compared with the work at 
- fever-heat in the Ecole, to the end that every physical science— 
mathematics, astronomy, and chemistry, and the terminologies 
of each—may be packed into the heads of so many young men 
between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one. ‘The govern- 
ment here in France, which in so many ways seems to aim at 
taking the place of the paternal authority, has in this respect 
no bowels—no father’s pity for its children; it makes its 
experiments 2” anima vilti. The ugly statistics of the mischief 
it has wrought have never been asked for ; no one has troubled 
to inquire how many cases of brain fever there have been 
during the last thirty-six years; how many explosions of de- 
spair among those young lads; no one takes account of the | 
‘moral destruction which decimates the victims. I lay stress 
on this painful aspect of the problem because it occurs by the 
way and before the final result; for a few weaklings the 
result comes soon instead of late. You know, besides, that’ 
these victims, whose minds work slowly, or who, it may be, 
are temporarily stupefied with overwork, are allowed to stay 
for three years instead of two at the Ecole, but the way these 
are regarded there has no very favorable influence on their 
capacity. In fact, it may chance that young men, who at a 
later day will show that they have something in them, may 

13 


194 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


leave the Ecole without an appointment at all, because at the 
final examination they do not exhibit the amount of knowledge 
required of them. These are ‘plucked,’ as they say, and 
Napoleon used to make sub-lieutenants of them. In these 
days the ‘ plucked’ candidate represents a vast loss of capital 
invested by families, and a loss of time for the lad himself. 

‘¢ But, after all, I myself succeeded! At the age of one- 
and-twenty I had gone over all thé ground discovered in 
mathematics by men of genius, and I was impatient to dis- 
tinguish myself by going farther. The desire is so natural 
that almost every student when he leaves the Ecole fixes his 
eyes on the sun called glory in an invisible heaven. The 
first thought in all our minds was to be a Newton, a Laplace, 
ora Vauban. Such are the efforts which France requires of 
young men who leave the famous Ecole Polytechnique! 

**And now let us see what becomes of the men sorted and 
sifted with such care out of a whole generation. At one-and- 
twenty we dream dreams, a whole lifetime lies before us, we 
expect wonders. I entered the School of Roads and Bridges, 
and became a civil engineer. I studied construction, and 
with what enthusiasm! You must remember it. In 1826, 
when I left the school, at the age of twenty-four, I was still 
only a civil engineer on my promotion, with a government 
grant of a hundred and fifty francs a month. The worst-paid 
book-keeper in Paris will earn as much by the time he is eigh- 
teen, and with four hours’ work in the day. By unhoped-for 
good luck, it may be because my studies had brought me dis- 
tinction, I received an appointment as a surveyor in 1828. I 
was twenty-six years old. They sent me, you know where, 
into a sub-prefecture with a salary of two thousand five hun- 
dred francs. The money matters nothing. My lot is at any 
rate more brilliant than a carpenter’s son has a right to expect ; 
but what journeyman grocer put into a shop at the age of six- 
teen will not be fairly on the way to an independence by the 
time he is six-and-twenty ? 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 195 


*«Then I found out the end to which these terrible displays 
of intelligence were directed, and why the gigantic efforts, 
required of us by the government, were made. The govern- 
ment sent me to count paving-stones and measure the heaps 
of road-material by the waysides. I must repair, keep in order, 
and occasionally construct runnels and culverts, maintain the 
ways, clean out, and occasionally open ditches. At the office 
I must answer all questions relating to the alignment or the 
planting and felling of trees. These are, in fact, the principal 
and often the only occupations of an ordinary surveyor. 
Perhaps from time to time there is some bit of leveling to be 
done, and that we are obliged to do ourselves, though any of 
the foremen with his practical experience could do the work 
a good deal better than we can with all our science. 

*¢ There are nearly four hundred of us altogether—ordinary 
surveyors and assistants—and as there are only some hundred- 
odd engineers-in-chief, all the subordinates cannot hope for 
promotion ; there is practically no higher rank to absorb the 
engineers-in-chief, for twelve or fifteen inspectors-general or 
divisionaries scarcely count, and their posts are almost as 
much of sinecures in our corps as colonelcies in the artillery 
when the battery is united with it. An ordinary civil engi- 
neer, like a captain of artillery, knows all that is known about 
his work; he ought not to need anyone to look after him 
except an administrative head to connect the eighty-six engi- 
neers with each other and the government, for a single 
engineer with two assistants is quite enough for a department. 
A hierarchy in such a body as ours works in this way. Ener- 
getic minds are subordinated to old effete intelligences, who 
think themselves bound to distort and alter (they think for 
the better) the drafts submitted to them; perhaps they do this 
simply to give some reason for their existence; and this, it 
seems to me, is the only influence exerted on public works 
in France by the General Council of Roads and Bridges. 

‘*Let us suppose, however, that between the ages of thirty 


196 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


and forty I become an engineer of the first-class, and am an 
engineer-in-chief by the time I am fifty. Alas! I foresee 
my future; it lies before my eyes. My engineer-in-chief is a 
man of sixty. He left the famous Ecole with distinction, as 
I did ; he has grown gray in two departments over such work 
as I am doing; he has become the most commonplace man 
imaginable, has fallen from the heights of attainment he once 
reached ; nay, more than that, he is not even abreast of sci- 
ence. Science has made progress, and he has remained 
stationary ; worse still, has forgotten what he once knew! 
The man who came to the front at the age of twenty-two with 
every sign of real ability has nothing of it left now but the 
appearance. At the very outset of his career his education 
was especially directed to mathematics and the exact sciences, 
and he took no interest in anything that was not ‘in his 
line.” You would scarcely believe it, but the man knows 
absolutely nothing of other branches of learning. Mathe- 
matics have dried up his heart and brain. I cannot tell any 
one but you what a nullity he really is, screened by the name 
of the Ecole Polytechnique. The label is impressive; and 
people, being prejudiced in his favor, do not dare to throw 
any doubt on his ability. But to you I may say that his be- 
fogged intellects have cost the department in one affair a 
million francs, where two hundred thousand should have 
been ample. I was for protesting, for opening the prefect’s 
eyes, and whatnot; but a friend of mine, another surveyor, 
told me about a man in the corps who became a kind of black 
sheep in the eyes of the administration by doing something of 
this sort. ‘Would you yourself be very much pleased, when 
you are engineer-in-chief, to have your mistakes shown up by 
a subordinate?’ asked he. ‘ Your engineer-in-chief will be 
a divisionary inspector before very long. As soon as one of us 
makes some egregious blunder, the administration (which, of 
course, must never be in the wrong) withdraws the perpetrator 
from active service and makes him an inspector.’ That is 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 197 


how the reward due to a capable man becomes a sort of pre- 
mium on stupidity. 

*‘ All France saw one disaster in the heart of Paris, the 
miserable collapse of the first suspension bridge which an 
engineer (a member of the Académie des Sciences, moreover) 
endeavored to construct, a collapse caused by blunders which 
would not have been made by the constructor of the Canal 
de Briare in the time of Henri IV., nor by the monk who 
built the Pont Royal. Him, too, the administration consoled 
by a summons to the Board of the General Council. 

‘* Are the technical schools really manufactories of incom- 
‘petence? The problem requires prolonged observation. If 
there is anything in what I say, a reform is needed, at any 
rate in the way in which they are carried on, for I do not 
venture to question the usefulness of the Ecoles. Still, look- 
ing back over the past, does it appear that France has ever 
lacked men of great ability at need, or the talent she tries to 
hatch as required in these days by Monge’s method? What 
school turned out Vauban save the great school called ‘ voca- 
tion?’ Who was Riquet’s master? When genius has raised 
itself above the social level, urged upwards by a vocation, it 
is almost always fully equipped ; and in that case your man is 
no ‘specialist,’ but has something universal in his gift. Ido 
not believe that any engineer who ever left the Ecole could 
build one of the miracles of architecture which Leonardo da 
Vinci reared ; Leonardo at once mechanician, architect, and 
painter, one of the inventors of hydraulic science, the inde- 
fatigable constructor of canals. They are so accustomed 
while yet in their teens to the bald simplicity of geometry, 
that by the time they leave the Ecole they have quite lost all 
feeling for grace or ornament; a column to their eyes is a 
useless waste of material ; they return to the point where art 
begins—on utility they take their stand, and stay there. 

‘¢ But this is as nothing compared with the disease which is 
consuming me. I feel that a most terrible change is being 


198 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


wrought in me; I feel that my energy and faculties, after the 
exorbitant strain put upon them, are dwindling and growing 
feeble. The influence of my humdrum life is creeping over 
me. After such efforts as mine, I feel that I am destined to 
do great things, and I am confronted by the most trivial task 
work, such as verifying yards of road-material, inspecting high- 
ways, checking inventories of stores. I have not enough to 
do to fill two hours in the day. 

‘‘T watch my colleagues marry and fall out of touch with 
modern thought. Is my ambition really immoderate? I 
should like to serve my country. My country required me to 
give proof of no ordinary powers, and bade me become an 
encyclopedia of the sciences—and here I am, folding my 
arms in an obscure corner of a province. I am not allowed 
to leave the place where I am penned up, to exercise my wits 
by trying new and useful experiments elsewhere. A vague 
indefinable grudge is the certain reward awaiting any one of 
us who follows his own inspirations, and does more than the 
department requires of him. The most that such a man 
ought to hope for is that his overweening presumption may be 
passed over, his talent neglected, while his project receives 
decent burial in the pigeon-holes at headquarters. What will 
Vicat’s reward be, I wonder? (Between ourselves, Vicat is the 
only man among us who has made any real advance in the 
science of construction.) 

‘¢The General Council of Roads and Bridges is partly 
made up of men worn out by long and sometimes honorable 
service, but whose remaining brain-power only exerts itself 
negatively; these gentlemen erase anything that they cannot 
understand at their age, and act as a sort of extinguisher to be 
put when required on audacious innovations. The Council 
might have been created for the express purpose of paralyzing 
the arm of the generous younger generation, which only asks 
for leave to work, and would fain serve France. 

‘“¢ Monstrous things happen in Paris, The future of 2 





MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 199 


province hangs on the signature of these bureaucrats. I have 
not time to tell you all about the intrigues which balk the 
best schemes; for them the best schemes are, as a matter of 
fact, those which open up the best prospects of money-making 
to the greed of speculators and companies, which knock most 
‘abuses on the head, for abuses are always stronger than the 
spirit of improvement in France. In five years’ time my old 
self-will has ceased to rule. I shall see my ambitions die out 
in me, and my noble desire to use the faculties which my 
country bade me display, and then left to rust in my obscure 
corner. 

‘Taking the most favorable view possible, my outlook 
seems to me to be very poor. I took advantage of leave of 
absence to come to Paris. I want to change my career, to 
find scope for my energies, knowledge, and activity. I shall 
send in my resignation, and go to some country where men 
with my special training are needed, where great things may 
be done. If none of all this is possible, I will throw in my 
lot with some of these new doctrines which seem as if they 
must make some great change in the present order of things, 
by directing the workers to better purpose. For what are we 
but laborers without work, tools lying idle in the warehouse ? 
We are organized as if it was a question of shaking the globe, 
and we are required to do—nothing. 

“«T am conscious that there is something great in me which 
is pining away and will perish; I tell you this with mathe- 
matical explicitness. But I should like to have your advice 
before I make a change in my condition. I look on myself 
as your son, and should never take any important step without 
consulting you, for your experience is as great as your good- 
ness. I know, of course, that when the goverhment has ob- 
tained its specially trained men, it can no more set its en- 
gineers to construct public monuments than it can declare war 
to give the army an opportunity of winning great battles and 
of finding out which are its great captains. But, then, as the 


200 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


man has never failed to appear when circumstances called for 
him; as, at the moment when there is much money to be 
spent and great things to be done, one of these unique men 
of genius springs up from the crowd ; and as, particularly in 
matters of this kind, one Vauban is enough at a time, nothing 
could better demonstrate the. utter uselessness of the institu- 
tion. In conclusion, when a picked man’s mental energies 
have been stimulated by all this preparation, how can the 
government help seeing that he will make any amount of 
struggle before he allows himself to be effaced? Is it wise 
policy? What is it but a way of kindling burning ambition ? 
Would they bid all those perfervid heads learn to calculate 
anything and everything but the probabilities of their own 
futures ? 

‘« There are, no doubt, exceptions among some six hundred 
young men, some firm and unbending characters, who decline 
to be withdrawn in this way from circulation. I know some 
of them; but if the story of their struggles with men and 
things could be told in full; if it were known how that, while 
full of useful projects and ideas which would put life and 
wealth into stagnant country districts, they meet with hin- 
drances put in their way by the very men who (so the govern- 
ment led them to believe) would give them help and counte- 
nance, the strong man, the man of talent, the man whose 
nature is a miracle, would be thought a hundred times more 
unfortunate and more to be pitied than the man whose de- 
generate nature tamely resigns himself to the atrophy of his 
faculties. 

**So I would prefer to direct some private commercial or 
industrial enterprise, and live on very little, while trying to 
find a solution of some one of the many unsolved problems 
of industry and modern life, rather than remain where I am. 
You will say that there is nothing to prevent me from employ- 
ing my powers as it is; that in the silence of this humdrum 
life I might set myself to find the solution of one of those 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 201 


problems which presses on humanity. Ah! monsieur, do you 
not understand what the influence of the provinces is; the 
enervating effect of a life just sufficiently busy to fill the days 
with all but futile work, but yet not full enough to give occu- 
pation to the powers so fully developed by such a training as 
ours? You will not think, my dear guardian, that I am eaten up 
with the ambition of money-making or consumed with a mad 
desire for fame. I have not learned to calculate to so little 
purpose that I cannot measure the emptiness of fame. The 
inevitable activity of life has led me not to think of mar- 
riage; and looking at my present prospects, I have not so 
good an opinion of existence as to give such a sorry present 
to another self. Although I look upon money as one of the 
most powerful instruments that can be put in the hands of a 
civilized man, money is, after all, only a means. My sole 
pleasure lies in the assurance that I am serving my country. 
To have employment for my faculties in a congenial atmo- 
sphere would be the height of enjoyment for me. Perhaps 
among your acquaintance in your part of the world, in the 
circle on which you shine, you might hear of something which - 
requires some of the aptitude which you know that I possess ; 
I will wait six months for an answer from you. 

“« These things which I am writing to you, dear patron and 
friend, others are thinking. I have seen a good many of my 
colleagues or old scholars at the Ecole caught, as I was, in 
the snare of a special training ; ordnance surveyors, captain- 
professors, captains in the artillery, doomed (as they see) to 
be captains for the rest of their days, bitterly regretting that 
they did not go into the regular army. Again and again, in 
fact, we have admitted to each other in confidence that we are 
victims of a long mystification, which we only discover when 
it is too late to draw back, when the mill-horse is used to the 
round and the sick man accustomed to his disease. 

‘¢ After looking carefully into these melancholy results, I 
have asked myself the following questions, which I send to 


202 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


you, as aman of sense, whose mature wisdom will see all that 
lies in them, knowing that they are fruit of thought refined 
by the fires of painful experience. 

‘¢What end has the government in view? To obtain the 
best abilities? If so, the government sets to work to obtain 
a directly opposite result: if it had hated talent, it could not 
have had better success in producing respectable mediocri- 
ties. Or does it intend to open out a career to selected 
intelligence? Itcould not well have given it a more mediocre 
position. There isnot a man sent out by the Ecoles who does 
not regret between fifty and sixty that he fell into the snare 
concealed by the offers of the government. Does it mean 
to secure men of genius? What really great man have the 
Ecoles turned out since 1790? Would Cachin, the genius 
to whom we owe Cherbourg, have existed but for Napoleon ? 
It was imperial despotism which singled him out; the Con- 
stitutional Administration would have stifled him. Does the 
Académie des Sciences number many members who have passed 
through the technical schools? Two or three, it may be ; but 
the man of genius invariably appears from outside. In the 
particular sciences which are studied at these schools, genius 
obeys no laws but its own; it only develops under circum- 
stances over which we have no control; and neither the 
government nor anthropology knows the conditions. Riquet, 
Perronet, Leonardo da Vinci, Cachin, Palladio, Brunelleschi, 
Michel Angelo, Bramante, Vauban, and Vicat all derived their 
genius from unobserved causes and preparation to which we 
give the name of chance—the great word for fools to fall back 
upon. Schools or no schools, these sublime workers have 
never been lacking in every age. And now, does the govern- 
ment, by means of organizing, obtain works of public bai 
better done or at a cheaper rate ? 

‘*In the first place, private enterprise does very well with- 
out professional engineers ; and, in the second, state-directed 
works are the most expensive of all; and besides the actual 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 203 


outlay, there is the cost of the maintenance of the great staff 
of the Roads and Bridges Department. Finally, in other 
countries where they have no institutions of this kind, in Ger- 
many, England, and Italy, such public works are carried out 
quite as well, and cost less than ours in France. Each of the 
three countries is well known for new and useful inventions 
of this kind. I know it is the fashion to speak of our Ecoles 
as if they were the envy of Europe; but Europe has been 
watching us these fifteen years, and nowhere will you find the 
like instituted elsewhere. The English, those shrewd men of 
business, have better schools among their working classes, 
where they train practical men, who become conspicuous at 
once when they rise from practical work to theory. Stephen- 
son and Macadam were not pupils in these famous institutions 
of ours. 

*¢ But where is the use? When young and clever engineers, 
men of spirit and enthusiasm, have solved at the outset of 
their career the problem of the maintenance of the roads 
of France, which requires hundreds of millions of francs 
every twenty-five years, which roads are in a deplorable state, 
it is in vain for them to publish learned treatises and memo- 
rials ; everything is swallowed down by the board of direction, 
everything goes in and nothing comes out of a central bureau 
in Paris, where the old men are jealous of their juniors, and 
high-places are refuges for superannuated blunderers. 

‘¢ This is how, with a body of educated men distributed all 
over France, a body which is part of the machinery of admin- 
istrative government, and to whom the country looks for 
direction and enlightenment on the great questions within 
their department, it will probably happen that we in France 
shall still be talking about railways when other countries have 
finished theirs. Now, if ever France ought to demonstrate 
the excellence of her technical schools as an institution, 
should it not be in a magnificent public work of this special 
kind, destined to change the face of many countries, and to 


204 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


double the length of human life by modifying the laws of 
time and space? Belgium, the United States, Germany, and 
England, without an Ecole Polytechnique, will have a network 
of railways while our engineers are still tracing out the plans, 


and hideous jobbery lurking behind the projects will check’ 


their execution. You cannot lay a stone in France until half 
a score of scribblers in Paris have drawn up a driveling 
report that nobody wants. The government, therefore, gets 
no good of its technical schools ; and as for the individual 
—he is tied down to a mediocre career, his life is a cruel 
delusion. Certain it is that with the abilities which he dis- 
played between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five he would 
have gained more reputation and riches if he had been left to 
shift for himself than he will acquire in the career to which 
government condemns him. Asa merchant, a scientific man, 
or a soldier, this picked man would have a wide field before 
him, his precious faculties and enthusiasm would not have 
been prematurely and stupidly exhausted. Then where is the 
advance? Assuredly the individual and the state both lose by 
the present system. Does not an experiment carried on for 
half a century show that changes are needed in the way the 
institution is worked? What priesthood qualifies a man for 
the task of selecting from a whole generation those who shall 
hereafter be the learned class of France? What studies 
should not these high-priests of destiny have made? A 
knowledge of mathematics is, perhaps, scarcely so necessary 
as physiological knowledge ; and does it not seem to you that 
something of that clairvoyance which is the wizardry of great 
men might be required too? As a matter of fact, the exam- 
iners are old professors, men worthy of all honor, grown old 
in harness ; their duty it is to discover the best memories, and 
there is an end of it; they can do nothing but what is 
required of them. ‘Truly, their functions should be the most 
important ones in the state, and call for extraordinary men to 
fulfill them. 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 205 


“Do not think, my dear friend and patron, that my censure 
is confined to the Ecole through which I myself passed ; it 
applies not only to the institution itself, but also and still 
more to the methods by which lads are admitted ; that is to 
say, to the system of competitive examination. Competition 
is a modern invention, and essentially bad. It is bad not 
only in learning, but in every possible connection, in the arts, 
in every election made of men, projects, or things. It is 
unfortunate that our famous schools should not have turned 
out better men than any other chance assemblage of lads; but 
it is still more disgraceful that among the prizemen at the 
institute there has been no great painter, musician, architect, 
or sculptor; even as for the past twenty years the general 
elections have swept no single great statesman to the front out 
of all the shoals of mediocrities. My remarks have a bearing 
upon an error which is vitiating both politics and education in 
France. ‘This cruel error is based on the following principle, 
which organizers have overlooked: 

“** Nothing in experience or in the nature of things can war- 
rant the assumption that the intellectual qualities of early man- 
hood will be those of maturity.’ 

*« At the present time I have been brought in contact with 
several distinguished men who are studying the many moral 
maladies which prey upon France. ‘They recognize, as I do, 
the fact that secondary education forces a sort of temporary 
capacity in those who have neither present work nor future 
prospects; and that the enlightenment diffused by primary 
education is of no advantage to the state, because it is bereft 
of belief and sentiment. 

‘Our whole educational system calls for sweeping reform, 
-which should be carried out under the direction of a man of 
profound knowledge, a man with a strong will, gifted with 
that legislative faculty which, possibly, is found in Jean- 
Jacques Rousseau alone of all moderns. 

*« Then, perhaps, the superfluous specialists might find em- 


206 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


ployment in elementary teaching; it is badly needed by the 
mass of the people. We have not enough patient and devoted 
teachers for the training of these classes. The deplorable preva- 
lence of crimes and misdemeanors points to a weak spot in our 
social system—the one-sided education which tends to weaken 
the fabric of society, by teaching the masses to think suffi- 
ciently to reject the religious beliefs necessary for their govern- 
ment, yet not enough to raise them to a conception of the 
theory of obedience and duty, which is the last word of 
transcendental philosophy. It is impossible to put a whole 
nation through a course of Kant; and belief and use and 
wont are more wholesome for the people than study and argu- 
ment. 

‘*If I had to begin again from the very beginning, I dare 
say I might enter a seminary and incline to the life of a simple 
country parson or a village schoolmaster. But now I have 
gone too far to be a mere elementary teacher ; and, besides, a 
wider field of action is open to me than the schoolhouse or 
the parish. I cannot go the whole way with the Saint-Simon- 
ians, with whom I am tempted to throw in my lot; but with 
all their mistakes, they have laid a finger on many weak points 
in our social system, the results of our legislation, which will 
be palliated rather than remedied—simply putting off the evil 
day for France. Good-bye, dear sir; in spite of these ob- 
-servations of mine, rest assured of my respectful and faithful 
friendship, a friendship which can only grow with time. 

‘‘ GREGOIRE GERARD.”’ 


Acting on old business habit, Grossetéte had indorsed the 
letter with the rough draft of a reply, and written beneath it 
the sacramental word ‘‘ Answered.” 


‘¢My DEAR GERARD :—It is the more unnecessary to enter 
upon any discussion of the observations contained in your 
letter, since that chance (to make use of the word for fools) 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 207 


enables me to make you an offer which will practically extricate 
you from a position in which you find yourself so ill at ease. 
Mme. Graslin, who owns the forest of Montégnac, and a good 
deal of barren land below the long range of hills on which 
the forest lies, has a notion of turning her vast estates to some 
account, of exploiting the woods and bringing the stony 
land into cultivation. Small pay and plenty of work! A 
great result to be brought about by insignificant means, a 
district to be transformed! Abundance made to spring up on 
the barest rock! Is not this what you wished to do, you 
who would fain realize a poet’s dream? From the sincere 
ring of your letter, I do not hesitate to ask you to come to 
Limoges to see me, but do not send in your resignation, my 
friend, only sever your connection with your corps, explain to 
the authorities that you are about to make a study of some prob- 
lems that lie within your province, but outside the limits of 
your work for the government. In that way you will lose 
none of your privileges, and you will gain time in which to 
decide whether this scheme of the curé’s at Montégnac, which 
finds favor in Mme. Graslin’s eyes, is a feasible one. If 
these vast changes should prove to be practicable, I will lay 
the possible advantages before you by word of mouth, and 
not by letter. Believe me to be always sincerely your friend, 
‘* GROSSETETE.”’ 


For all reply Mme. Graslin wrote : 


‘‘Thank you, my friend; I am waiting to see your 
protégé.”’ 


She showed the letter to M. Bonnet, with the remark, 
‘*Here is one more wounded creature seeking the great 
hospital ! ’’ : 

The curé read the letter and re-read it, took two or three 
turns upon the terrace, and handed the paper back to Mme, 
Graslin. . 


208 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


“«¢ It comes from a noble nature, the man has something in 
him,’’ he said. ‘‘ He writes that the schools, invented by the 
spirit of the Revolution, manufacture inaptitude ; for my own 
part, I call them manufactories of unbelief; for if M. Gérard 
is not an atheist, he is a Protestant is 

‘* We will ask him,’’ she said, struck with the curé’s answer. 





A fortnight later, in the month of December, M. Gros- 
setéte came to Montégnac, in spite of the cold, to introduce 
his protégé. Véronique and M. Bonnet awaited his arrival 
with impatience. 

‘*One must love you very much, my child,’’ said the old 
man, taking both of Véronique’s hands, and kissing them 
with the old-fashioned elderly gallantry which a woman never 
takes amiss ; ‘‘ yes, one must love you very much indeed to 
stir out of Limoges in such weather as this; but 1 had made up 
my mind that I must come in person to make you a present of 
M. Grégoire Gérard. Here he is. A man after your own 
heart, M. Bonnet,’’ the old banker added with an affectionate 
greeting to the curé. 

Gérard’s appearance was not very prepossessing. He was 
a thick-set man of middle height ; his neck was lost in his 
shoulders, to use the common expression ; he had the golden 
hair and red eyes of an Albino; and his eyelashes and eye- 
brows were almost white. Although, as often happens in 
these cases, his complexion was dazzlingly fair, its original 
beauty was destroyed by the very apparent pits and seams left 
by an attack of smallpox ; much reading had doubtless injured 
his eyesight, for he wore colored spectacles. Nor when he 
divested himself of a thick overcoat, like a gendarme’s, did 
his dress redeem these personal defects. 

The way in which his clothes were put on and buttoned, 
like his untidy cravat and crumpled shirt, were distinctive 
signs of that personal carelessness, laid to the charge of 
learned men, who are all, more or less, oblivious of their sur- 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 209 


roundings. His face and bearing, the great development of 
chest and shoulders, as compared with his thin legs, suggested 
a sort of physical deterioration produced by meditative 
habits, not uncommon in those who think much; but the 
stout heart and eager intelligence of the writer of the letter 
were plainly visible on a forehead which might have been 
chiseled in Carrara marble. Nature seemed to have reserved 
her seal of greatness for the brow, and stamped it with the 
steadfastness and goodness of the man. The nose was of the 
true Gallic type, and blunted. The firm, straight lines of the 
mouth indicated an absolute discretion and the sense of 
economy ; but the whole face looked old before its time, and 
worn with study. 

Mme. Graslin turned to speak to the inventor. ‘‘ We 
already owe you thanks, monsieur,”’ she said, ‘‘ for being so 
good as to come to superintend engineering work in a country 
which can hold out no inducements to you save the satisfac- 
tion of knowing that you can do good.”’ 

“*M. Grossetéte told me enough about you on our way 
here, madame,’’ he answered, ‘‘ to make me feel very glad to 
be of any use to you. The prospect of living near to you and 
M. Bonnet seemed to be charming. Unless I am driven 
away, I look to spend my life here.” 

‘We will try to give you no cause for changing your 
opinion,”’ said Mme. Graslin. ; 

Grossetéte took her aside. ‘‘ Here are the papers which the 
public prosecutor gave me,’’ he said. ‘‘He seemed very 
much surprised that you did not apply directly to him. All 
that you have asked has been done promptly and with good- 
will. In the first place, your protégé will be reinstated in all 
his rights as a citizen ; and, in the second, Catherine Curieux 
will be sent to you in three months’ time.’’ 

‘¢ Where is she?’ asked Véronique. 

“¢ At the Hépital Saint-Louis,’’ Grossetéte answered. ‘‘She 
cannot leave Paris until she is recovered.’’ 

4 


210 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘‘ Ah! is she ill, poor thing? ”’ 

“You will find all that you want to know here,’’ said 
Grossetéte, holding out a packet. 

Véronique went back to her guests, and led the way to the 
magnificent dining-hall on the ground floor, walking between 
Grossetéte and Gérard. She presided over the dinner with- 
out joining them, for she had ‘made it a rule to take her 
meals alone since she had come to Montégnac. No one but 
Aline was in the secret, which the girl kept scrupulously until 
her mistress was in danger of her life. 

The mayor of Montégnac, the justice of the peace, and the 
doctor had naturally been invited to meet the newcomer. 

The doctor, a young man of seven-and-twenty, Roubaud 
by name, was keenly desirous of making the acquaintance of 
the great lady of Limousin. The curé was the better pleased 
to introduce him at the chateau since it was M. Bonnet’s wish 
that Véronique should gather some sort of society about her, 
to distract her thoughts from herself, and to find some mental 
food. Roubaud was one of the young doctors perfectly 
equipped in his science, such as the Ecole de Médecine turns 
out in Paris, a man who might, without doubt, have looked 
to a brilliant future in the vast theatre of the capital; but he 
had seen something of the strife of ambitions there, and took 
fright, conscious that he had more knowledge than capacity 
for scheming, more aptitude than greed; his gentle nature 
had inclined him to the narrower theatre of provincial life, 
where he hoped to win appreciation sooner than in Paris. 

At Limoges Roubaud had come into collision with old- 
fashioned ways and patients not to be shaken in their preju- 
dices ; he had been won over by M. Bonnet, who at sight of 
the kindly and prepossessing face had thought that here was 
a worker to co-operate with him. Roubaud was short and 
fair-haired, and would have been rather uninteresting looking 
but for the gray eyes, which revealed the physiologist’s 
sagacity and the perseverance of the student. Hitherto 


Vv 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 211 


Montégnac was fain to be content with an old army surgeon, 
who found his cellars a good deal more interesting than his 
patients, and who, moreover, was past the hard work of a 
country doctor. He happened to die just at that time. 
Roubaud had been in Montégnac for some eighteen months, 
and was very popular there; but Desplein’s young disciple, 
one of the followers of Cabanis, was no Catholic in his 
beliefs. In fact, as to religion, he had lapsed into a fatal 
indifference, from which he was not to be roused. He was 
the despair of the curé, not that there was any harm whatever 
in him, his invariable absence from church was excused by his 
profession, he never talked on religious topics, he was incapa- 
ble of making proselytes, no good Catholic could have be- 
haved better than he, but he declined to occupy himself with 
a problem which, to his thinking, was beyond the scope of the 
human mind; and the curé once hearing him let fall the 
remark that Pantheism was the religion of all great thinkers, 
fancied that Roubaud inclined to the Pythagorean doctrine 
of the transformation of souls. 

Roubaud, meeting Mme. Graslin for the first time, felt vio- 
lently startled at the sight of her. His medical knowledge 
enabled him to divine in her face and bearing and worn fea- 
tures unheard-of suffering of mind and body, a preternatural 
strength of character, and the great faculties which can endure 
the strain of very different vicissitudes. He, in a manner, 
read her inner history, even the dark places deliberately hid- 
den away; and more than this, he saw the disease that preyed 
upon the secret heart of this fair woman ; for there are certain 
tints in human faces that indicate a poison working in the 
thoughts, even as the color of fruit will» betray the presence 
of the worm at its core. From that time forward M. Roubaud 
felt so strongly attracted to Mme. Graslin, that he feared to 
be drawn beyond the limit where friendship ends. There was 
an eloquence, which men always understand, in Véronique’s 
brows and attitude, and, above all, in her eyes; it was suffi- 


212 THE COUNTRY PARSON. . 


ciently unmistakable that she was dead to love, even as other 
women with a like eloquence proclaim the contrary. The 
doctor became her chivalrous worshiper on the spot. He 
exchanged a swift glance with the curé, and M. Bonnet said 
within himself— 

‘*Here is the flash from heaven that will change this 
poor unbeliever? Mme. Graslin will have more eloquence 
than I.”’ : 

The mayor, an old countryman, overawed by the splendor 
of the dining-room, and surprised to be asked to meet one of 
the richest men in the department, had put on his best clothes 
for the occasion; he felt somewhat uneasy in them, and 
scarcely more at ease with his company. Mme. Graslin, too, 
in her mourning dress was an awe-inspiring figure ; the worthy 
mayor was dumb. He had once been a farmer at Saint- 
Léonard, had bought the one habitable house in the township, 
and cultivated the land that belonged to it himself. He could 
read and write, but only managed to acquit himself in his 
official capacity with the help of the justice’s clerk, who pre- 
pared his work for him; so he ardently desired the advent of 
a notary, meaning to lay the burden of his public duties on 
official shoulders when that day should come; but Montégnac 
was so poverty-stricken that a resident notary was hardly 
needed, and the notaries of the principal place in the arron- 
dissement found clients in Montégnac. 

The justice of the peace, Clousier by name, was a retired 
barrister from Limoges. Briefs had grown scarce with the 
learned gentleman, owing to a tendency on his part to put in 
practice the noble maxim that a barrister is the first judge of 
the client and the case. About the year 1809 he obtained 
this appointment; the salary was a meagre pittance, but 
enough to live upon. In this way he had reached the most 
honorable but the most complete penury. Twenty-two years 
of residence in the poor commune had transformed the worthy 
lawyer into a countryman, scarcely to be distinguished from 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 213 


any of the small farmers round about, whom he resembled 
even in the cut of his coat. But beneath Clousier’s homely 
exterior dwelt a clairvoyant spirit, a philosophical politician 
whose Gallio’s attitude was due to his perfect knowledge of 
human nature and of men’s motives. Fora long time he had 
baffled M. Bonnet’s perspicacity. The man who, in a higher 
sphere, might have played the active part of a L’ H6pital, in- 
capable of intrigue, like all deep thinkers, had come at last 
to’ lead the contemplative life of a hermit of olden time. 
Rich without doubt with all the gains of privation, he was 
swayed by no personal considerations; he knew the law, and 
judged impartially. His life, reduced to the barest neces- 
saries, was regular and pure. The peasants loved and re- 
spected M. Clousier for the fatherly disinterestedness with 
which he settled their disputes and gave advice in even their 
smallest difficulties. For the last two years ‘‘ Old Clousier,”’ 
as every one called him in Montégnac, had had one of his 
nephews to help him, a rather intelligent young man, who, at 
a later day, contributed not a little to the prosperity of the 
commune. 

The most striking thing about the old man’s face wagigs.. 
broad vast forehead. Two bushy masses of white hair — 
out on either side of it. A florid complexion and magiste- 
rial portliness might give the impression that (in spite of his 
real sobriety) he was as earnest a disciple of Bacchus as of 
Troplong and Toullier. His scarcely audible voice indicated 
asthmatic oppression of breathing; possibly the dry air of 
Montégnac had counted for something in his decision when 
he made up his mind to accept the post. His little house had 
been fitted up for him by the well-to-do sabot-maker, his land- 
lord. ' 

Clousier had already seen Véronique at the church, and 
had formed his own opinion of her, which opinion he kept to 
himself; he had not even spoken of her to M. Bonnet, with 
whom he was beginning to feel at home. For the first time in 


214 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


his life, the justice of the peace found himself in the company 
of persons able to understand him. 

When the six guests had taken their places round a hand- 
somely-appointed table (for Véronique had brought all her 
furniture with her to Montégnac), there was a brief embar- 
rassed pause. The doctor, the mayor, and the justice were 
none of them acquainted with Grossetéte or with Gérard. 
But during the first course the banker’s geniality thawed the 
ice, Mme. Graslin graciously encouraged M. Roubaud and 
drew out Gérard; under her influence all these different 
natures, full of exquisite qualities, recognized their kinship. 
It was not long before each felt himself to be in a congenial 
atmosphere. Sothat by the time dessert was put on the table, 
and the crystal and the gilded edges of the porcelain sparkled, 
when choice wines were set in circulation, handed to the 
guests by Aline, Maurice Champion, and Grossetéte’s man, 
the conversation had become more confidential, so that the four 
noble natures thus brought together by chance felt free to 
speak their real minds on the great subjects that men love to 
discuss in good faith. 

‘* Your leave of absence coincided with the Revolution of 
July,’’ Grossetéte said, looking at Gérard in a way that asked 
his opinion. 

‘« Yes,’’ answered the engineer. ‘‘I was in Paris during 
the three famous days; I saw it all; I drew some disheart- 
ening conclusions.”’ 

‘« What were they ?’’ M. Bonnet asked quickly. 

‘‘ There is no patriotism left except under the workman’s 
shirt,’ answered Gérard. ‘‘ Therein lies the ruin of France. 
The Revolution of July is the defeat of men who are notable 
for birth, fortune, and talent, and a defeat in which they 
acquiesce. The enthusiastic zeal of the masses has gained a 
victory over the rich and intelligent classes, to whom zeal and 
enthusiasm are antipathetic.”’ 

“To judge by last year’s events,’’ added M. Clousier, ‘‘ the 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 215 


change is a direct encouragement to the evil which is devour- 
ing us—to individualism. In fifty years’ time every generous 
question will be replaced by a ‘What is that to me?’ the 
watchword of independent opinion descended from the spiri- 
tual heights where Luther, Calvin, Zwingle, and Knox inav-- 
gurated it, till even in political economy each has a right to 
his own opinion. Lach for himself! Let each man mind his 
own business /—these two. terrible phrases, together with What 
ts that to me? complete a trinity of doctrine for the bour- 
geoisie and the peasant proprietors. This egoism is the result 
of defects in our civil legislation, somewhat too hastily accom- 
plished in the first instance, and now confirmed by the terrible 
consecration of the Revolution of July.”’ 

The justice relapsed into his wonted silence again with this 
speech, which gave the guests plenty to think over. Then M. 
Bonnet ventured yet further, encouraged by Clousier’s re- 
marks, and by a glance exchanged between Gérard and 
Grossetéte. 

‘Good King Charles X.,’’ said he, ‘‘ has just failed in the 
most provident and salutary enterprise that king ever under- 
took for the happiness of a nation intrusted to him. The 
Church should be proud of the share she had in his councils. 
But it was the heart and brain of the upper classes which failed 
him, as they had failed before over the great question of the 
law with regard to the succession of the eldest son, the eternal 
honor of the one bold statesman of the Restoration—the 
Comte de Peyronnet. To reconstruct the nation on the basis 
of the family, to deprive the press of its power to do harm 
without restricting its usefulness, to confine the elective cham- 
ber to the functions for which it was really intended, to give 
back to religion its influence over the people—such were the 
four cardinal points of the domestic policy of the House of 
Bourbon. Well, in twenty years’ time all France will see the 
necessity of that great and salutary course. King Charles X- 
was, moreover, more insecure in the position which he decided 


216 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


to quit than in the position in which his paternal authority 
came to anend. The future history of our fair country, when 
everything shall be periodically called in question, when cease- 
less discussion shall take the place of action, when the press 
shall become the sovereign power and the tool of the basest 
ambitions, will prove the wisdom of the king who has just 
taken with him the real principles of government. History 
will render to him his due for the courage with which he with- 
stood his best friends, when once he had probed the wound, 
seen its extent, and the pressing necessity for the treatment, 
which has not been continued by those for whom he threw 
himself into the breach.’’ 

‘* Well, M. le Curé, you go straight to the point without 
the slightest disguise,’’ cried M. Gérard, “ but I do not say 
nay. When Napoleon made his Russian campaign he was 
forty years ahead of his age; he was misunderstood. Russia 
and England, in 1830, can explain the campaign of 1812. 
Charles X. was in the same unfortunate position ; twenty-five 
years hence his ordinances may perhaps become law.”’ 

‘‘France, too eloquent a country not to babble, too vain- 
glorious to recognize real ability, in spite of the sublime good 
sense of her language and the mass of her people, is the very 
last country in which to introduce the system of two deliber- 
ating chambers,’’ the justice of the peace remarked. ‘* At 
any rate, not without the admirable safeguards against these 
elements in the national character, devised by Napoleon’s 
experience. The representative system may work in a country 
like England, where its action is circumscribed by the nature 
of the soil ; but the right of primogeniture, as applied to real 
estate, is a necessary part of it ; without this factor, the repre- 
sentative system becomes sheer nonsense. England owes its 
existence to the quasi-feudal law which transmitted the house 
and lands to the oldest son. Russia is firmly seated on the 
feudal system of autocracy. For these reasons, both nations 
at the present day are making alarming progress. Austria 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 217 


could not have resisted our invasions as she did, nor declared 
a second war against Napoleon, had it not been for the law of 
primogeniture, which preserves the strength of the family and 
maintains production on the large scale necessary to the state. 
The House of Bourbon, conscious that liberalism had relegated 
France to the rank of a third-rate power in Europe, deter- 
mined to regain and keep their place, and the country shook 
off the Bourbons when they had all but saved the country. I 
do not know how deep the present state of things will sink us.’’ 

‘*If there should be a war,’’ cried Grossetéte, ‘‘ France 
will be without horses, as Napoleon was in 1813, when he was 
reduced to the resources of France alone, and could not 
make use of the victories of Lutzen and Bautzen, and was 
crushed at Leipsic! If peace continues, the evil will grow 
worse: twenty years hence the number of horned cattle and 
horses in France will be diminished by one-half.’’ 

**M. Grossetéte is right,’’ said Gérard. ‘‘So the work 
which you have decided to attempt here is a service done to 
your country, madame,”’ he added, turning to Véronique. 

*€Ves,’’ said the justice of the peace, ‘‘* because Mme. 
Graslin has but one son. But will this chance in the succes- 
sion repeat itself? For a certain time, let us hope, the great 
and magnificent scheme of cultivation which you are to 
carry into effect will be in the hands of one owner, and there- 
fore will continue to provide grazing land for horses and 
cattle. But, in spite of all, a day will come when forest and 
field will be either divided up or sold in lots. Division and 
subdivision will follow, until the six thousand acres of plain 
will count ten or twelve hundred owners ; and when that time 
comes there will be no more horses nor prize cattle.”’ 

‘©Oh! when that time comes ”’ said the mayor. 

‘¢There is a What ts that to me?’’ cried M. Grossetéte, 
‘and M. Clousier sounded the signal for it ; he is caught in 
the act. . But, monsieur,’’ the banker went on gravely, 
addressing the bewildered mayor, ‘‘the time has come! 





218 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Round about Paris for a ten-league radius, the land is divided 
up into little patches that will hardly pasture sufficient milch 
cows. The commune of Argenteuil numbers thirty-eight 
thousand eight hundred and eighty-five plots of land, a good 
many of them bringing in less than fifteen centimes a year! 
If it were not for high farming and manure from Paris, which 
give heavy crops of fodder of different kinds, I do not know 
how cow-keepers and dairymen would manage. As it is, the 
animals are peculiarly subject to inflammatory diseases con- 
sequent on the heating diet and confinement to cow-sheds. 
They wear out their cows round about Paris just as they wear 
out horses in the streets. Then market-gardens, orchards, 
nurseries, and vineyards pay so much better than pasture, that 
the grazing land is gradually diminishing. A few years more, 
and miik will be sent in by express to Paris, like saltfish, and 
what is going on round Paris is happening also about all large 
towns. The evils of the minute subdivision of landed prop- 
erty are extending round a hundred French cities; some day 
all France will be eaten up by them. 

‘In 1800, according to Chaptal, there were about five 
million acres of vineyard; exact statistics would show fully 
five times as much to-day. When Normandy is split up into 
an infinitude of small holdings, by our system of inheritance 
fifty per cent. of the horse and cattle trade there will fall off ; 
still Normandy will have the monopoly of the Paris miik 
trade, for luckily the climate will not permit vine culture. 
Another curious thing to notice is the steady rise in the price 
of butcher meat. In 1814, prices ranged from seven to 
eleven sous per pound; in 1850, twenty years hence, Paris 
will pay twenty sous, unless some genius is raised up to carry 
out the theories of Charles X.’’ 

‘‘You have pointed out the greatest evil in France,”’ said 
the justice of the peace. ‘‘ The cause of it lies in the chapter 
Des Successions in the Civil Code, wherein the equal division 
of real estate among the children of the family is required. 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 219 


That is the pestle which is constantly grinding the country 
to powder, gives to every one but a life-interest in property 
which cannot remain as it is after his death. A continuous 
process of decomposition (for the reverse process is never set 
up) will end by ruining France. The French Revolution 
generated a deadly virus, and the Days of July have set the 
poison working afresh; this dangerous germ of disease is the 
acquisition of land by peasants. If the chapter Des Successtons 
is the origin of the evil, it is through the peasant that it 
reaches its worst phase. The peasant never relinquishes the 
land he has won. Let a bit of land once get between the 
ogre’s ever-hungry jaws, he divides and subdivides it until there 
are but strips of three furrows left. Nay, even there he does 
not stop! he will divide the three furrows in lengths. The 
commune of Argenteuil, which M. Grossetéte instanced just 
now, is a case in point. The preposterous value which the 
peasants set on the smallest scraps of land makes it quite im- 
possible to reconstruct an estate. The law and procedure are 
made a dead letter at once by this division, and ownership is 
reduced to absurdity. But it is a comparatively trifling 
matter that the minute subdivision of the law should paralyze 
the treasury and the law by making it impossible to carry out 
its wisest regulations. There are far greater evils than even 
these. There are actually landlords of property bringing in 
fifteen and twenty centimes per annum! 

**Monsieur has just said something about the falling off 
of cattle and horses,’’ Clousier continued, looking at Gros- 
setéte ; ‘‘the system of inheritance counts. for much in that 
matter. The peasant proprietor keeps cows, and cows only, 
because milk enters into his diet; he sells the calves; he even 
sells butter. He has no mind to raise oxen, still less to breed 
horses; he has only just sufficient fodder for a year’s consump- 
tion; and when a dry spring comes and hay is scarce, he is 
forced to take his cow to market; he cannot afford to keep 
her. If it should fall out so unluckily that two bad hay 


220 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


harvests came in succession, you would see some strange 
fluctuations in the price of beef in Paris, and, above all, in 
veal, when the third year came.”’ 

«‘And how would they do for patriotic banquets then ?’’ 
asked the doctor, smiling. 

‘*Ah!’’ exclaimed Mme. Graslin, glancing at Roubaud, 
‘so even here, as everywhere else, politics must be served up 
with journalistic items.’’ 

*‘In this bad business the bourgeoisie play the part of 
American pioneers,’’ continued Clousier. ‘‘ They buy up the 
large estates, too large for the peasant to meddle with, and 
divide them. After the bulk has been cut up and triturated, 
a forced sale or an ordinary sale in lots hands it over sooner 
or later to the peasant. Everything nowadays is reduced to 
figures, and I know of none more eloquent than these: 
France possesses forty-nine million Aectares of land, for the 
sake of convenience, let us say forty, deducting something for 
roads and high-roads, dunes, canals, land out of cultivation, 
and wastes like the plain of Montégnac, which need capital. 
Now, out of forty million ectares to a population of thirty- 
two millions, there are a hundred and twenty-five million 
parcels of land, according to the land-tax returns. I have 
not taken the fractions into account. So we have outrun the 
agrarian law, and yet neither poverty nor discord are at an 
end. Then the next thing will be that those who are turning 
the land into crumbs and diminishing the output of produce ~ 
will find mouthpieces for the cry that true social justice only 
permits the usufruct of the land to each. ‘They will say that 
ownership in perpetuity is robbery. The Saint-Simonians 
have begun already.’’ 

‘* There spoke the magistrate,’’ said Grossetéte, ‘‘ and this 
is what the banker adds to his bold reflections. When landed 
property became tenable by peasants and small shopkeepers, a 
great wrong was done to France, though the government does 
not so much as suspect it. Suppose that we set down the 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONIEGNAC. . Mg 


whole mass of the peasants at three million families, after 
deducting the paupers. Those families all belong to the wage- 
earning class. Their wages are paid in money instead of in 
kind a 

‘**There is another immense blunder in our legislation,’’ 
Clousier cried, breaking in on the banker. ‘In 1790 it 
might still have been possible to pass a law empowering 
employers to pay wages in kind, but now—to introduce 
such a measure would be to risk a revolution.”’ 

**In this way,’’ Grossetéte continued, ‘‘the money of the 
country passes into the pockets of the proletariat. Now, the 
peasant has one passion, one desire, one determination, one 
aim in life—to die a landed proprietor. This desire, as M. 
Clousier has very clearly shown, is one result of the Revolu- 
tion—a direct consequence of the sale of the national lands. 
Only those who have no idea of the state of things in country 
districts could refuse to admit that each of those three million 
families annually buries fifty francs as a regular thing, and in 
this way a hundred and fifty millions of francs are withdrawn 
from circulation every year. The science of political econ- 
omy has reduced to an axiom the statement that a five-franc 
piece, if it passes through a hundred hands in the course of a 
day, does duty for five hundred francs. Now, it iscertain for 
some of us old observers of the state of things in country 
districts that the peasant fixes his eyes on a bit of land, keeps 
ready to pounce upon it, and bides his time—meanwhile he 
never invests his capital. The intervals in the peasant’s land- 
purchases should, therefore, be reckoned at periods of seven 
years. For seven years, consequently, a capital of eleven 
hundred million francs is lying idle in the peasants’ hands ; 
and as the lower middle classes do the same thing to quite the 
same extent, and behave in the same way with regard to 
land on too large a scale for the peasant to nibble at, in forty- 
two years France loses the interest on two milliards of francs 
at least—that is to say, on something like a hundred millions 





222 ‘THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


every seven years, or six hundred millions in forty-two years. 
But this is not the only loss. France has failed to create the 
worth of six hundred millions in agricultural or industrial 
produce. And this failure to produce may be taken as a loss 
of twelve hundred million francs ; for if the market price of 
a product were not double the actual cost of production, com- 
merce would be ata standstill. The proletariat deprives itself 
of six hundred million francs of wages. These six hundred 
‘millions of initial loss that represent, for an economist, 
twelve hundred millions of loss of benefit derived from circu- 
lation, explain how it is that our commerce, shipping trade, 
and agriculture compare so badly with the state of things in 
England. Inspite of the differences between the two countries 
(a good two-thirds of them, moreover, in our favor), England 
could mount our cavalry twice over, and every one there 
eats meat. But then, under the English system of land- 
tenure, it is almost impossible for the working classes to 
buy land, and so all the money is kept in constant circulation. 
So besides the evils of the comminution of the land, and 
the decay of the trade in cattle, horses, and sheep, the 
chapter Des Successtons costs us a further loss of six hundred 
million francs of interest on the capital buried by the peasants 
and trades-people, or twelve hundred million francs’ worth of 
produce (at the least)—that is to say, a total loss of three 
milliards of francs withdrawn from circulation every half- 
century.”’ 

‘‘The moral effect is worse than the material effect !’’ 
cried the curé. ‘‘ We are turning the peasantry into pauper 
landowners, and half educating the lower middle classes. It 
will not be long before the canker of Hach for himself! Let 
cach mind his own business ! which did its work last July among 
the upper classes, will spread to the middle classes. A pro- 
letariat of hardened materialists, knowing no God but envy, 
no zeal but the despair of hunger, with no faith nor belief 
left, will come to the front, and trample the heart of the 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 223 


country under foot. The foreigner, waxing great under a 
monarchical government, will find us under the shadow of 
royalty without the reality of a king, without law under the 
cover of legality, owners of property but not proprietors, with 
the right of election but without a government, listless holders 
of free and independent opinions, equal but equally unfor- 
tunate. Let us hope that between now and then God will 
raise up in France the man for the time, one of those elect 
who breathe a new spirit into a nation, a man who, whether 
he is a Sylla or a Marius, whether he comes from the heights 
or rises from the depths, will reconstruct society.” 

‘<The first thing to do will be to send him to the assizes 
or to the police court,’’ said Gérard. ‘‘The judgment of 
Socrates or of Christ will be given to him, here in 1831, as of 
old in Attica and at Jerusalem. To-day, as of old, jealous 
mediocrity allows the thinker to starve. If the great political 
physicians who have studied the diseases of France, and are 
opposed to the spirit of the age, should resist to the starva- 
tion-point, we ridicule them, and treat them as visionaries. 
Here in France we revolt against the sovereign thinker, the 
great man of the ters just as we rise in revolt against the 


\political sovereign.’ 
t 


«But in those old times the Sophists had a very limited a | 
audience,’’ cried the justice of the peace; ‘‘ while to-day, 
through the medium of the periodical press, they can lead 
a whole nation astray ; and the press which pleads for com- 
mon-sense finds no echo!’’ a 

The mayor looked at M. Clousier with intense astonish- 
ment. Mme. Graslin, delighted to find a simple justice of the 
peace interested in such grave problems, turned to her neigh- 
bor, M. Roubaud, with, ‘‘ Do you know M. Clousier?’”’ 

‘¢Not till to-day!. Madame, you are working miracles,”’ 
he added in her ear. ‘‘And yet look at his forehead, how 
finely shaped it is! It is like the classical or traditional | 
brow that sculptors gave to Lycurgus and the wise men of 


224 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Greece, is it not? Clearly there was an impolitic side to the 
Revolution of July,’’ he added aloud, after going through Gros- 
setéte’s reasonings. He had been a medical student, and 
perhaps would have lent a hand at a barricade. 

‘«’? Twas trebly impolitic,’’ said Clousier. ‘*‘ We have con- 
cluded the case for law and finance, now for the government. 
The royal power, weakened by the dogma of the national 
sovereignty, in virtue of which the election was made on the 
gth of August, 1830, will strive to overcome its rival, a prin- 
ciple which gives the people the right of changing a dynasty 
every time they fail to apprehend the intentions of their 
king; so there is a domestic struggle before us which will 
check progress in France for a long while yet.” 

‘‘England has wisely steered clear of all these sunken 
rocks,’’ said Gérard. ‘‘I have been in England. I admire 
the hive which sends swarms over the globe to. settle and 
civilize. In England political debate is a comedy intended 
to satisfy the people and to hide the action of authority 
which moves untrammeled in its lofty sphere; election there 
is not, as in France, the referring of a question to a stupid 
bourgeoisie. If the land were divided up, England would 
cease to exist at once. The great landowners and the lords 
control the machinery of government. They have a navy 
which takes possession of whole quarters of the globe (and 
under the very eyes of Europe) to fulfill the exigencies of 
their trade, and form colonies for the discontented and 
unsatisfactory. Instead of waging war on men of ability, 
annihilating and underrating them, the English aristocracy 
continually seeks them out, rewards and assimilates them. 
The English are prompt to act in all that concerns the govern- 
ment, and in the choice of men and material, while with us 
action of any kind is slow; and yet they are slow, and we 
impatient. Capital with them is adventurous, and always 
moving ; with us it is shy and suspicious. Here is corrobora- 
tion of M. Grossetéte’s statements about the loss to industry 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 295 


of the peasants’ capital ; I can sketch the difference in a few 
words. English capital, which is constantly circulating, has 
created ten milliards of wealth in the shape of expanded 
manufactures and joint-stock companies paying dividends; 
while here in France, though we have more Sap: it has not 
yielded one-tenth part of the profit.’’ 

‘*Tt is all the more extraordinary,’’ said Roubaud, ‘since 
they are lymphatic, and we are generally either sanguine or 
nervous.”’ 

‘* Here is a great problem for you to study, monsieur,”’ 
said Clousier. ‘‘ Given a national temperament, to find the 
institutions best adapted to counteract it. Truly, Cromwell 
was a great legislator. He, one man, made England what 
she is by promulgating the Act of Navigation, which made 
the English the enemy of all other nations, and infused into 
them a fierce pride, that has served them asa lever. But in 
spite of their garrison at Malta, as soon as France and Russia 
fully understand the part to be played in politics by the Black 
Sea and the Mediterranean, the discovery of a new route to 
Asia by way of Egypt or the Euphrates valley will be a death- 
blow to England, just as the discovery of the Cape of Good 
Hope was the ruin of Venice.” 

*¢ And nothing of God in all this!’ cried the curé. ‘*M. 
Clousier and M. Roubaud are quite indifferent in matters of 
religion and you, monsieur?’’ he asked questioningly, 
turning to Gérard. 

‘¢ A Protestant,’’ said Grossetéte. 

“You guessed rightly!’’ exclaimed Véronique, with a 
glance at the curé.as she offered her hand to Clousier to 
return to her apartments. 

All prejudices excited by M. Gérard’s appearance quickly 
vanished, and the three notables of Montégnac congratulated 
themselves on such an acquisition. 

“‘Unluckily,’”’ said M. Bonnet, ‘‘ there is a cause for an- 
tagonism between Russia and the Catholic countries on the 

16 





226 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


shores of the Mediterranean ; a schism of little real impor- 
tance divides the Greek Church from the Latin, to the great 
misfortune of humanity.’’ 

‘¢ Each preaches for his saint,’’ said Mme. Graslin, smiling. 
‘©M. Grossetéte thinks of lost milliards; M. Clousier of law 
in confusion ; the doctor sees in legislation a question of. 
temperaments ; M. le Curé sees in religion an obstacle in the 
way of a good understanding between France and Russia.” 

*¢ Please add, madame,’’ said Gérard, ‘‘ that in the seques- 
tration’ of capital by the peasant and small tradesman, I see 
the delay of the completion of railways in France -——” 

‘* Then what would you have ?’’ asked she. 

‘*Oh! The admirable Councilors of State who devised 
laws in the time of the Emperor and the Corps /égis/atif, when 
those who had brains as well as those who had property had a 
voice in the election, a body whose sole function it was to 
oppose unwise laws or capricious wars. ‘The present Chamber 
of Deputies is like to end, as you will see, by becoming the 
~ governing body, and legalized anarchy it will be.”’ 

** Great heavens!’’ cried the curé in an excess of lofty 
patriotism, ‘‘ how is it that minds so enlightened,’’—he in- 
dicated Clousier, Roubaud, and Gérard—* see the evil, and 
point out the remedy, and do not begin by applying it to 
themselves? All of you represent the classes attacked ; all of 
you recognize the necessity of passive obedience on the part 
of the great masses in the state, an obedience like that of the 
soldier in time of war ; all of you desire the unity of authority, 
and wish that it shall never be called in question. But that 
consolidation to which England has attained through the de- 
velopment of pride and material interests (which are a sort of 
belief) can only be attained here by sentiments induced by 
catholicism, and you are not Catholics! I the priest drop 
my character, and reason with rationalists. 

‘*How can you expect the masses to become religious and 
to obey if they see irreligion and relaxed discipline around 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 227 


.them? A people united by any faith will easily get the better 
of men. without belief. The law of the interest of all, which 
underlies patriotism, is at once annulled by the law of indi- 
vidual interest, which authorizes and implants selfishness. 
Nothing is solid and durable but that which is natural, and 
the natural basis of politics is the family. The family should 
be the basis of all institutions. A universal effect denotes a 
coextensive cause. These things that you notice proceed 

, from the social principle itself, which has no force, because it 
is based on independent opinion, and the right of private 

judgment is the forerunner of individualism. There is less 
wisdom in looking for the blessing of security from the intel- 
ligence and capacity of the majority than in depending upon 
the intelligence of institutions and the capacity of one single 
man for the blessing of security. It is easier to find wisdom 

in one man than in a whole nation. The peoples have but a 
blind heart to guide them; they feel, but they do not see. 
A government must see, and must not be swayed by senti- 
ments. There is therefore an evident contradiction between 
the first impulses of the masses and the action of authority 
which must direct their energy and give it unity. To find a 
great prince is a great chance (to use your language), but to 
trust your destinies to any assembly of men, even if they are 
honest, is madness. 

‘¢France is mad at thismoment! Alas! you are as thor- 
oughly convinced of this as I. If all men who really be- 
lieve what they say, as you do, would set the example in 
their own circle; if every intelligent thinker would set his 
hand to raising once more the altars of the great spiritual 
republic, of the one Church which has directed humanity, 
we might see once more in | France the miracles wrought there 
by our fathers.”’ 

‘¢ What would you Gate, M. le Curé?”’ said Gérard, “if one 
must speak to you as in the confessional—I look on faith as a 
lie which you consciously tell yourself, on hope as a lie about 


228 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


the future, and on this charity of yours as a child’s trick ; 
one is a good boy, for the sake of the jam.’’ 

‘*And yet, monsieur, when hope rocks us we sleep well,’’ 
said Mme. Graslin. 

Roubaud, who was about to speak, supported by a glance | 
from Grossetéte and the curé, stopped short, however, at the 
words. 

“Is it any fault of ours,’’ said Clousier, ‘‘if Jesus Christ 
had not time to formulate-a system of government in ac- 
cordance with His teaching, as Moses did and Confucius— 
the two greatest legislators whom the world has seen, for 
the Jews and the Chinese still maintain their national exist- 
ence, though the first are scattered all over the earth, and the 
second an isolated people ?”’ 

‘*Ah! you are giving me a task indeed,’’ said the curé 
candidly, ‘‘but I shall triumph, I shall convert all of you 
You are much nearer the faith than you think. ‘Truth lurks 
beneath the lie; come forward but a step, and you re- 
turn! ”’ 

And with this cry from the curé the conversation took a 
fresh direction. 

The next morning before M. Grossetéte went, he promised 
to take an active share in Véronique’s schemes so soon as they 
should be judged practicable. Mme. Graslin and Gérard rode 
beside his traveling carriage as far as the point where the cross- 
road joined the high-road from Bordeaux to Lyons. Gérard 
was so eager to see the place, and Véronique so anxious to 
show it to him, that this ride had been planned overnight. 
After they took leave of the kind old man, they galloped down 
into the great plain and skirted the hillsides that lay between 
the chateau and the Living Rock. The surveyor recognized 
the rock embankment which Farrabesche had pointed out; it 
stood up like the lowest course of masonry under the founda- 
tions of the hills, in such a manner that when the bed of this 
indestructible canal of nature’s making should be cleared out, 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 229 


and the water-courses regulated so as not to choke it, irrigation 
would actually be facilitated by that long channel which lay 
about ten feet above the surface of the plain. The first thing 
to be done was to estimate the volume of water in the Gabou, 
and to make certain that the sides of the valley could hold it; 
no decision could be made till this was known. 

Véronique gave a horse to Farrabesche, who was to accom- 
pany Gérard and acquaint him with the least details which he 
himself had observed. After some days of consideration 
Gérard thought the base of either parallel chains of hill solid 
enough (albeit of different material) to hold the water. 

In the January of the following year, a wet season, Gérard 
calculated the probable amount of water discharged by the 
Gabou, and found that, when the three water-courses had been 
diverted into the torrent, the total amount would be sufficient 
to water an area three times as great as the plain of Montégnac. 
The dams across the Gabou, the masonry and engineering 
works needed to bring the water-supply of the three little 
valleys into the plain, should not cost more than sixty thou- 
sand francs; for the surveyor discovered a quantity of chalky 
deposit on the common, so that lime would be cheap, and the 
forest being so near at hand, stone and timber would cost 
nothing even for transport. All the preparations could be 
made before the Gabou ran dry, so that when the important 
work should be begun it should quickly be finished. But the 
plain was another matter. Gérard considered that there the 
first preparation would cost at least two hundred thousand 
francs, sowing and planting apart. 

The plain was to be divided into four squares of two hun- 
dred and fifty acres each. There was no question of breaking 
up the waste ; the first thing to do was to remove the largest 
flints. Navvies would be employed to dig a great number of 
trenches and to line the channels with stone to keep the water 
in, for the water must be made to flow or to stand as required. 
All this work called for active, devoted, and painstaking 


230 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


workers. Chance so ordered it that the plain was a straight- _ 
forward piece of work, a level stretch, and the water with a 
ten-foot fall could be distributed at will. There was nothing 
to prevent the finest results in farming the land; here there 
might be just such a splendid green carpet as in North Italy, 
a source of wealth and of pride to Lombardy. Gérard sent 
to his late district for an old and experienced foreman, Fres- 
quin by name. 

Mme. Graslin, therefore, wrote to ask Grossetéte to negotiate 
for her aloan of two hundred and fifty thousand francs on the 
security of her government stock ; the interest of six years, 
Gérard calculated, should pay off the debt, capital and in- 
terest. The loan was concluded in the course of the month 
of March; and by that time Gérard, with Fresquin’s assist- 
ance, had finished all the preliminary operations, leveling, bor- 
ing, observations, and estimates. The news of the great scheme 
had spread through the country and roused the poor people ; 
and the indefatigable Farrabesche, Colorat, Clousier, Roubaud, 
and the Mayor of Montégnac, all those, in fact, who were 
interested in the enterprise for its own sake or for Mme. 
Graslin’s, chose the workers or gave the names of the poor 
who deserved to be employed. 

Gérard bought partly for M. Grossetéte, partly on his own 
account, some thousand acres of land on the other side of the 
road through Montégnac. Fresquin, his foreman, also took 
five hundred acres, and sent for his wife and children. 

‘In the early days of April, 1833, M. Grossetéte came to 
Montégnac to see the land purchased for him by Gérard ; but 
the principal motive of his journey was the arrival of Catherine 
Curieux. She had come by the diligence from Paris to 
Limoges, and Mme. Graslin was expecting her. Grossetéte 
found Mme. Graslin about to start for the church. M. Bonnet 
was to say a mass to ask the blessing of heaven on the work 
about to begin. All the men, women, and children were 
present. 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 231 


M. Grossetéte brought forward a woman of thirty or there- 
abouts, who looked weak and out of health. ‘Here is your 
protégé,’’ he said, addressing Véronique. 

** Are you Catherine Curieux?’’ Mme. Graslin asked. 

** Yes, madame.”’ 

For a moment Véronique looked at her; Catherine was 
rather tall, shapely, and pale; the exceeding sweetness of her 
features was not belied by the beautiful soft gray eyes. In the 
shape of her face and the outlines of her forehead there was a 
nobleness, a sort of grave and simple majesty, sometimes seen 
in very young girls’ faces in the country, a kind of flower of 
beauty, which field-work, and the constant wear of household 
cares, and sunburn, and neglect of appearance, wither with 
alarming rapidity. From her attitude as she stood it was 
easy to discern that she would move with the ease of a 
daughter of the fields and something of an added grace, un- 
consciously learned in Paris. If Catherine had never left the 
Corréze, she would no doubt have been by this time a wrinkled 
and withered woman, the bright tints in her face would have 
grown hard ; but Paris, which had toned down the high color, 
had preserved her beauty; and ill-health, weariness, and sor- 
row had given to her the mysterious gifts of melancholy and 
of that inner life of thought denied to poor toilers in the field 
who lead an almost animal existence. Her dress likewise 
marked a distinction between her and the peasants; for it 
abundantly displayed the Parisian taste which even the least 
coquettish women are so quick to acquire. Catherine Curieux, 
not knowing what might await her, and unable to judge 
the lady in whose presence she stood, seemed somewhat 
embarrassed. 

“Do you still love Farrabesche?’’ asked Mme. Graslin, 
when Grossetéte left the two women together for a moment. 

‘¢ Yes, madame,”’ she answered, flushing red. 

“*But if you sent him a thousand francs while he was in 
prison, why did you not come to him when he came out? 


232 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Do you feel any repugnance for him? Speak to me as you 
would to your own mother. Were you afraid that he had 
gone utterly to the bad? that he cared for you no longer ?”’ 

‘¢ No, madame ; but I can neither read nor write. I was 
living with a very exacting old lady; she fell ill; we sat up 
with her of a night, and I had to nurse her. I knew the time 
was coming near when Jacques would be out of prison, but I 
could not leave Paris until the lady died. She left me nothing, 
after all my devotion to her and her interests. I had made 
myself ill with sitting up with her and the hard work of nurs- 
ing, and I wanted to get well again before I came back. I 
spent all my savings, and then I made up my mind to go into 
the Hépital Saint-Louis, and have just been discharged as 
cured.’’ 

Mme. Graslin was touched by an explanation so simple. 

‘‘ Well, but, my dear,’’ she said, ‘‘ tell me why you left 
your people so suddenly ; what made you leave your child? 
why did you not send them news of you, or get some one to 
write——”’ 

For all answer, Catherine wept. 

‘* Madame,”’ she said at last, reassured by the pressure of 
Véronique’s hand, ‘‘I daresay I was wrong, but it was more 
than I could do to stop in the place. It was not that I felt 
I had done wrong; it was the rest of them; I was afraid 
of their gossip and talk. So long as Jacques was here in 
danger, he could not do without me ; but when he was gone, 
I felt as if I could not stop. There was I, a girl with a child 
and nohusband! The lowest creature would have been better 
than I. If I had heard them say the least word about Ben- 
jamin or his father, I do not know what I should have done. 
I should have killed myself perhaps or gone out of my mind. 
My own father or mother might have said something hasty in 
a moment of anger. Meek: as I am, I am too irritable to 
bear hasty words or insult. I have been well punished; I 
could not see my child, and never a day passed but I thought 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 233 


of him! I wanted to be forgotten, and forgotten I am. 
Nobody has given me a thought. They thought I was dead, 
and yet many and many a time I felt I could like to leave 
everything to have one day here and see my little boy a 

“Your little boy—see, Catherine, here he is!’’ replied 
Madame Graslin. 

Catherine looked up and saw Benjamin, and something like 
a feverish shiver ran through her. 

‘* Benjamin,’’ said Mme. Graslin, ‘‘come and kiss your 
mother.”’ 

“‘My mother?’’ cried Benjamin in amazement. He flung 
his arms round Catherine’s neck, and she clasped him to her 
with wildenergy. But the boy escaped, and ran away crying, 
“¢T will find him/’’ 

Mme. Graslin, seeing that Catherine’s strength was failing, 
made her sit down; and as she did so her eyes met M. 
Bonnet’s look, her color rose, for in that keen glance her 
confessor read her heart. She spoke tremulously. 

“IT hope, M. le Curé,’’ she said, ‘‘that you. will marry 
Catherine and Farrabesche at once. Do you not remember 
M. Bonnet, my child? He will tell you that Farrabesche has 
behaved himself like an honest man since he came back. 
Every one in the countryside respects him ; if there is a place 
in the world where you may live happily with the good opinion 
of every one about you, it is here in Montégnac, With God’s 
will, you will make your fortune here, for you shall be my 
tenants. Farrabesche has all his citizen’s rights again.”’ 

«This is all true, my daughter,”’ said the curé. 

As he spoke, Farrabesche came in, led by his eager son. 
Face to face with Catherine in Mme. Graslin’s presence, his 
face grew white, and he was mute. He saw how active the 
kindness of the one had been for him, and guessed all that 
the other had suffered in her enforced absence. Véronique 
turned to go with M. Bonnet, and the curé for his part wished 

.to take Véronique aside. As soonas they were out of hearing, 





234 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Véronique’s confessor looked full at her and saw her color 
rise ; she lowered her eyes like a guilty creature. 

‘© You are degrading charity,”’ he said severely. 

‘¢ And how? ”’ she asked, raising her head. 

‘Charity,’’ said M. Bonnet, ‘‘is a passion as far greater 
than Jove, as humanity, madame, is greater than one human 
creature. All this is not the spontaneous work of disinter- 
ested virtue. You are falling from the grandeur of the service 
of man tothe service of a single creature. In your kindness 
to Catherine and Farrabesche there is an alloy of memories 
and after-thoughts which spoils it in the sight of God. Pluck 
out the rest of the dart of the spirit of evil from your heart. 
Do not spoil the value of your good deeds in this way. Will 
you ever attain at last to that holy ignorance of the good 
that you do, which is the supreme grace of man’s actions?” 

Mme. Graslin turned away to dry her eyes. Her tears told 
the curé that his words had reached and probed some unhealed 
wound in her heart. Farrabesche, Catherine, and Benjamin 
came to thank their benefactress, but she made a sign to them 
to go away and leave her with M. Bonnet. 

You see how I have hurt them,”’ she said, bidding him 
see their disappointed faces. And the tender-hearted curé 
beckoned to them to come back. 

“<You must be completely happy,’’ she said. ‘‘ Here is the 
patent which gives you back all your rights as a citizen, and 
exempts you from the old humiliating formalities,’’ she added, 
holding out to Farrabesche a paper which she had kept. 
Farrabesche kissed Véronique’s hand. There was an expres- 
sion of submissive affection and quiet devotion in his eyes, 
the devotion which nothing could change, the fidelity of a 
dog for his master. 

«¢ Tf Jacques has suffered much, madame, I hope that it will 
be possible for me to make up to him in happiness for the 
trouble he has been through,’’ said Catherine ; ‘‘for whatever 
he may have done, he is not bad.” 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 235 


Mme. Graslin turned away her head. The sight of their 
happiness seemed to crush her. M. Bonnet left her to go to 
the church, and she dragged herself thither on M. Grossetéte’s 
arm. 

After breakfast, every one went to see the work begun. All 
the old people of Montégnac were likewise present. Véron- 
ique stood between M. Grossetéte and M. Bonnet on the top 
of the steep slope which the new road ascended, whence they 
could see the alignment of the four new roads, which served 
as a deposit for the stones taken off the land. Five navvies 
were clearing a space of eighteen feet (the width of each road), 
and throwing up a sort of embankment of good soil as they 
worked. Four men on either side were engaged in making a 
ditch, and these also made a bank of fertile earth along the 
edge of the field. Behind them came two men, who dug 
holes at intervals, and planted trees. In each division, thirty 
laborers (chosen from among the poor), twenty women, and 
forty girls and children, eighty-six workers in all, were busy 
piling up the stones which the workmen riddled out along the 
bank so as to measure the quantity produced by each group. 
In this way all went abreast, and with such picked and enthu- 
siastic workers rapid progress was being made. Grossetéte 
promised to send some trees, and to ask for more, among 
Mme. Graslin’s friends. It was evident that there would not 
be enough in the nursery plantations at the chateau to supply 
such a demand. 

Towards the end of the day, which was to finish with a 
_ great dinner at the chateau, Farrabesche begged to speak with 
Mme. Graslin fora moment. Catherine came with him. 

‘‘Madame,”’ he said, ‘‘ you were so kind as to promise me 
the home farm. You meant to help me toa fortune when 
you granted me such a favor, but I have come round to 
Catherine’s ideas about our future. If I did well there, there 
would be jealousy; a word is soon said; I might find things 
unpleasant, I am afraid, and, besides, Catherine would never 


236 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


feel comfortable; it would be better for us to keep to ourselves, 
in fact. SoI have come just to ask you if you will give us the 
land about the mouth of the Gabou, near the common, to 
farm instead, and a little bit of the wood yonder under the 
Living Rock. You will have a lot of workmen thereabouts 
in July, and it would be easy then to build a farmhouse on a 
knoll in a good situation. We should be very happy. I 
would send for Guépin, poor fellow, when he comes out of 
prison; he would work like a horse, and it is likely I might 
find a wife for him. My man is no do-nothing. No one will 
come up there to stare at us; we will colonize that bit of land, 
and it will be my great ambition to make a famous farm for 
you there, Besides, I have come to suggest a tenant for 
your great farm—a cousin of Catherine’s, who has a little 
money of his own; he will be better able than I to look after 
such a big concern as that. In five years’ time, please God, 
you will have five or six thousand head of cattle or horses 
down there in the plain that they are breaking up, and it will 
really take a good head to look after it all.’’ 

Mme. Graslin recognized the good sense of Farrabesche’s 
request, and granted it. 

As soon as a beginning was made in the plain, Mme. 
Graslin fell into the even ways of a country life. She went 
to mass in the morning, watched over the education of the 
son whom she idolized, and went to see her workmen. After 
dinner she was at home to her friends in the little drawing- 
room on the first floor of the centre tower. She taught Rou- 
baud, Clousier, and the curé whist—Gérard knew the game 
already—and when the party broke up towards nine o’clock, 
every one went home. The only events in the pleasant life 
were the successes of the different parts of the great enterprise. 

June came, the bed of the Gabou was dry, Gérard had 
taken up his quarters in the old keeper’s cottage; for Farra- 
besche’s farmhouse was finished by this time, and fifty masons, 
obtained from Paris, were building a wall across the valley 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 237 


from side to side. ‘The masonry was twenty feet thick at the 
base, gradually sloping away to half that thickness at the top, 
and the whole length of it was embedded in twelve feet of 
solid concrete. On the side of the valley Gérard added a 
course of concrete with a sloping surface twelve feet thick at 
the base, and a similar support on the side nearest the com- 
mons, covered with leaf-mold several feet deep, made a sub- 
stantial barrier which the flood-water could not break through. 
In case of a very wet season, Gérard contrived a channel at a 
suitable height for the overflow. Everywhere the masonry 
was carried down on the solid rock (granite, or. tufa), that the 
water might not escape at the sides. By the middle of August 
the dam was finished. Meanwhile, Gérard also prepared 
three channels in the three principal valleys, and all of the 
undertakings cost less than the estimate. In this way the 
farm by the chateau could be put in working order. 

The irrigation channels in the plain under Fresquin’s super- 
intendence corresponded with the natural canal at the base of 
the hills ; all the water-courses departed thence. The great 
abundance of flints enabled him to pave all the channels, and 
sluices were constructed so that the water might be kept at 
the required height in them. 

Every Sunday after mass Véronique went down through the 
park with Gérard and the curé, the doctor, and the mayor, to 
see how the system of water-supply was working. The winter 
of 1833-1834 was very wet. The water from the three 
streams had been turned into the torrent, and the flood had 
made the valley of the Gabou into three lakes, arranged of set 
design one above the other, so as to form a reserve for times 
of great drought. In places where the valley widened out, 
Gérard had. taken advantage of one or two knolls to make an 
island here and there, and to plant them with different trees. 
This vast engineering operation had completely altered the 
appearance of the landscape, but it would still be five or six 
years before it would take its true character. 


238 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘*The land was quite naked,’’ Farrabesche used to say, 
‘*and now madame has clothed it.’’ After all these great 
changes, every one spoke of Véronique as ‘‘ madame”’ in the 
countryside. When the rains ceased in June, 1834, trial was 
made of the irrigation system in the part of the plain where. 
seed had been sown; and the green growth thus watered was 
of the same fine quality as in an Italian marci/a, or a Swiss 
meadow. ‘The method in use on farms in Lombardy had been 
employed ; the whole surface was kept evenly moist, and the 
plain was as even as a carpet. The nitre in the snow, dis- 
solved in the water, doubtless contributed not a little to the 
fineness of the grass. Gérard hoped that the produce would 
be something like that of Switzerland, where, as is well 
known, this substance is an inexhaustible source of riches. 
The trees planted along the roadsides, drawing water sufficient 
from the ditches, made rapid progress. So it came to pass 
that in 1838, five years after Mme. Graslin came to Montégnac, 
the waste land, condemned as sterile by twenty genera- 
tions, was a green and fertile plain, the whole of it under 
cultivation. 

Gérard had built houses for five farms, besides the large 
one at the chateau; Gérard’s farm, like Grossetéte’s and 
Fresquin’s, received the overflow from Mme. Graslin’s estate ; 
they were conducted on the same methods, and laid out on 
the same lines. Gérard built a charming lodge on his own 
property. 

When all was finished, the township of Montégnac acted 
on the suggestion of its mayor, who was delighted to resign 
his office to Gérard, and the surveyor became mayor in his 
stead. 

In 1840 the departure of the first herd of. fat cattle sent 
from Montégnac to the Paris markets was an occasion for a 
rural féte. Cattle and horses were raised on the farms in the 
plain; for when the ground was cleared, seven inches of 
mold were usually found, which were manured by pasturing 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 239 


cattle on them, and continually enriched by the leaves that 
fell every autumn from trees, and, first and foremost, by the 
melted snow-water from the reservoirs in the Gabou. 

It was in this year that Mme. Graslin decided that a tutor 
must be found for her son, now eleven years old. She was 
unwilling to part with him, and yet desired to make a well- 
educated man of her boy. M. Bonnet wrote to the seminary. 
Mme. Graslin, on her side, let fall a few words concerning 
her wishes and her difficulty to Monseigneur Dutheil, recently 
appointed to an archbisopric. It was a great and serious 
matter to make choice of a man who must spend at least nine 
months out of twelve at the chateau. Gérard had offered 
already to ground his friend Francis in mathematics, but it 
was impossible to do without a tutor; and this choice that 
she must make was the more formidable to Mme. Graslin 
because she knew that her health was giving way. As the 
value of the land in her beloved Montégnac increased, she 
redoubled the secret austerities of her life. 

Monseigneur Dutheil, with whom Mme. Graslin still cor- 
responded, found her the man for whom she wished. He sent 
a schoolmaster named Ruffin from his own diocese. Ruffin 
was a young man of five-and-twenty with a genius for private 
teaching ; he was widely read ; in spite of an excessive sensi- 
bility, could, when necessary, show himself sufficiently severe 
for the education of a child, nor was his piety in any way 
prejudicial to his knowledge; finally, he was patient and 
pleasant-looking. 


“‘This is a real gift which I am sending you, my dear 
daughter,’’ so the archbishop wrote; ‘‘the young man is 
worthy to be the tutor of a prince, so I count upon you to 
secure his future, for he will be your son’s spiritual father.” 


M. Ruffin was so much liked by Mme. Graslin’s little circle 
of faithful friends that his coming made no change in the 


240 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


various intimacies of those who grouped about their idol, 
seized with a sort of jealousy on the hours and moments 
spent with her. 

The year 1843 saw the prosperity of Montégnac increasing 
beyond all hopes. The farm on the Gabou rivaled the farms 
on the plain, and the chateau led the way in all improvements. 
The five other farms, which by the terms of the lease paid an 
increasing rent, and would each bring in the sum of thirty 
thousand francs in twelve years’ time, then brought in sixty 
thousand francs a year all told. The farmers were just begin- 
ning to reap the benefits of their self-denial and Mme. Graslin’s 
sacrifices, and could afford to manure the meadows in the 
plain where the finest crops grew without fear of dry seasons. 
The Gabou farm paid its first rent of four thousand francs 
joyously. 

It was in this year that a man in Montégnac started a a/- 
gence between the chief town in the arrondissement and Lim- 
oges ; a coach ran either way daily. M. Clousier’s nephew 
sold his clerkship and obtained permission to practice as a 
notary, and Fresquin was appointed to be tax-collector in the 
canton. Then the new notary built himself a pretty house in 
upper Montégnac, planted mulberry trees on his land, and 
became Gérard’s deputy. And Gérard himself, grown bold 
with success, thought of a plan which was’to bring Mme. 
Graslin a colossal fortune ; for this year she paid off her loan, 
and began to receive interest from her investment in the funds. 
This was Gérard’s scheme: He would turn the little river 
into a canal by diverting the abundant water of the Gabou 
into it. This canal should effect a junction with the Vienne, 
and in this way it would be possible to exploit twenty thou- ° 
sand acres of the vast forest of Montégnac. The woods were 
admirably superintended by Colorat, but hitherto had brought 
in nothing on account of the difficulty of transport. With 
this arrangement it would be possible to fell a thousand acres 
every year (thus dividing the forest into twenty strips for suc- ~ 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 241 


cessive cuttings), and the valuable timber for building pur- 
poses could be sent by water to Limoges. This had been 
Graslin’s plan ; he had scarcely listened to the curé’s projects 
for the plain, he was far more interested in the scheme for 
making a canal of the little river. 


1§ 


Vv. 
VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 


In the beginning of the following year, in spite of Mme. 
Graslin’s bearing, her friends saw warning signs that death 
was near. To all Roubaud’s observations, as to the utmost 
ingenuity of the most keen-sighted questioners, Véronique 
gave but one answer, ‘‘ She felt wonderfully well.’’ Yet that 
spring, when she revisited forest and farms and her rich 
meadows, it was with a childlike joy that plainly spoke of 
sad forebodings. 

Gérard had been obliged to make a low wall of concrete 
from the dam across the Gabou to the park at Montégnac 
along the base of the lower slope of the hill of the Corréze ; 
this had suggested an idea to him. He would enclose the 
whole forest of Montégnac, and throw the park into it. Mme. 
Graslin put by thirty thousand francs a year for this purpose. 
It would take seven years to complete the wall; but when it 
was finished, the splendid forest would be exempted from the 
dues claimed by the government over unenclosed woods and 
lands, and the three ponds in the Gabou valley would lie 
within the circuit of the park. Each of the ponds, proudly 
dubbed ‘‘a lake,’’ had its island. ‘This year, too, Gérard, 
in concert with Grossetéte, prepared a surprise for Mme. 
Graslin’s birthday; he had built on the second and largest 
island a little Chartreuse—a summer-house, satisfactorily rustic 
without and perfectly elegant within. The old banker was 
in the plot, so were Farrabesche, Fresquin, and Clousier’s 
nephew, and most of the well-to-do folk in Montégnac. Gros- 
setéte sent the pretty furniture. The bell tower, copied from 
the tower of Vevay, produced a charming effect in the land- 
scape. Six boats (two for each lake) had been secretly built, 

(242) 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 243 


rigged, and painted during the winter by Farrabesche and 
Guépin, with some help from the village carpenter at Mon- 
tégnac. 

So one morning in the middle of May, after Mme. Graslin’s 
friends had breakfasted with her, they led her out into the 
park, which Gérard had managed for the last five years as 
architect and naturalist. It had been admirably laid out, 
sloping down towards the pleasant meadows in the Gabou 
valley, where below, on the first lake, two boats were in readi- 
ness for them. The meadowland, watered by several clear 
streams, had been taken in at the base of the great amphi- 
theatre at the head of the Gabou valley. The woods round 
about them had been carefully thinned and disposed with a 
view to the effect ; here the shapeliest masses of trees, there 
a charming inlet of meadow; there was an air of loneliness 
about the forest-surrounded place which soothed the soul. 

On a bit of rising ground by the lake Gérard had carefully 
reproduced the chalet which all travelers see and admire on 
the road to Brieg, through the Rhone valley. This was to be 
the chateau, dairy, and cow-shed. From the balcony there 
was a view over this landscape created by the engineer’s art, 
a view comparable, since the lakes had been made, to the 
loveliest Swiss scenery. 

It was a glorious day. Nota cloud in the blue sky, and on 
the earth beneath, the myriad gracious chance effects that the 
fair May month can give. Light wreaths of mist, risen from 
the lake, still hung like a thin smoke about the trees by the 
water’s edge—willows <nd weeping willows, ash and alder 
and abeles, Lombard and Canadian poplars, white and pink 
hawthorn, birch and acacia, had been grouped about the lake, 
as the nature of the ground and the trees themselves (all finely 
grown specimens now ten years old) suggested. The high 
green wall of forest trees was reflected in the sheet of water, 
clear as a mirror, and serene as the sky; their topmost crests, 
clearly outlined in that limpid atmosphere, stood out in con- 


244 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


trast with the thicket below them, veiled in delicate green 
undergrowth. The lakes, divided by strongly-built embank- 
ments with a causeway along them that served as a short cut 
from side to side of the valley, lay like three mirrors, each 
with a different reflecting surface, the water trickling from 
one to another in musical cascades. And beyond this, from 
the chalet you caught a glimpse of the bleak and barren com- 
mon lands, the pale chalky soil (seen from the balcony) 
looked like a wide sea, and supplied a contrast with the fresh 
greenery about the lake. Véronique saw the gladness in her 
friends’ faces as their hands were held out to assist her to 
enter the larger boat, tears rose to her eyes, and they rowed 
on in silence until they reached the first causeway. Here 
they landed, to embark again on the second lake; and Véro- 
nique, looking up, saw the summer-house on the island, and 
Grossetéte and his family sitting on a bench before it. 

‘They are determined to make me regret life, it seems,”’ 
she said, turning to the curé. . 

‘* We want to keep you among us,’’ Clousier said. 

‘There is no putting life into the dead,’’ she answered ; 
but at M. Bonnet’s look of rebuke, she withdrew into herself 
again. 

<«Simply let me have the charge of your health,”’ pleaded 
Roubaud in a gentle voice; ‘“I am sure that I could preserve 
her who is the living glory of the canton, the common bond 
that unites the lives of all our friends.” 

Véronique bent her head, while Gérard rowed slowly out 
towards the island in the middle of the sheet of water, the 
largest of the three. The upper lake chanced to be too full; 
the distant murmur of the weir seemed to find a voice for the 
lovely landscape. 

‘You did well indeed to bring me here to bid farewell to 
this entrancing view! ’’ she said, as she saw the beauty of the 
trees so full of leaves that they hid the bank on either 
side. 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 245 


The only sign of disapprobation which Véronique’s friends 
permitted themselves was a gloomy silence ; and, at a second 
glance from M. Bonnet, she sprang lightly from the boat with 
an apparent gaiety, which she sustained. Once more she be- 
came the lady of the manor, and so charming was she that 
the Grossetéte family thought that they saw in her the beauti- 
ful Mme. Graslin of old days. 

** Assuredly, you may live yet,’’ her mother said in Véron- 
ique’s ear. 

On that pleasant festival day, in the midst of a scene sub- 
limely transformed by the use of nature’s own resources, how 
should anything wound Véronique? Yet then and there she 
received her death-blow. 

It had been arranged that the party should return home 
towards nine o’clock by way of the meadows; for the roads, 
quite as fine as any in England or Italy, were the pride of 
their engineer. There were flints in abundance; as the 
stones were taken off the land they had been piled in heaps by 
the roadside ; and with such plenty of road-material, it was so 
easy to keep the ways in good order that in five years’ time 
they were in a manner macadamized. Carriages were waiting 
for the party at the lower end of the valley nearest the plain, 
almost under the Living Rock. The horses had all been 
bred in Montégnac. Their trial formed part of the pro- 
gramme for the day; for these were the first that were ready 
for sale, the manager of the stud having just sent ten of them 
up to the stables of the chateau. Four handsome animals in 
light and plain harness were to draw Mme. Graslin’s caléche, 
a present from Grossetéte. 

After dinner the joyous company went to take coffee on a 
promontory where a little wooden kiosk had been erected, a 
copy of one on the shores of the Bosphorus. From this 
point there was a wide outlook over the lowest lake, stretch- 
ing away to the great barrier across the Gabou, now covered 
thickly with a luxuriant growth of green, a charming spot for 


246 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


the eyes to rest upon. Colorat’s house and the old cottage, 
now restored, were the only buildings in the landscape; 
Colorat’s capacities were scarcely adequate for the difficult 
post of head forester in Montégnac, so he had succeeded to 
Farrabesche’s office. 

From this point Mme. Graslin fancied that she could see 
Francis near Farrabesche’s nursery of saplings; she looked 
for the child, and could not find him, till M. Ruffin pointed 
him out playing on the brink of the lake with M. Grossetéte’s 
great-grandchildren. Véronique felt afraid that some acci- 
dent might happen, and, without listening to remonstrances, 
sprang into one of the boats, landed on the causeway, and 
herself hurried away in search of her son. This little inci- 
dent broke up the party on the island. Grossetéte, now a 
venerable great-grandfather, was the first to suggest a walk 
along the beautiful field-path that wound up and down by the 
side of the lower lakes. 

Mme. Graslin saw Francis a long way off. He was with a 
woman in mourning, who had thrown her arms about him. 
She seemed to be from a foreign country, judging by her dress 
and the shape of her hat. Véronique in dismay called her 
son to her. 

“‘ Who is that woman ?’’ she asked of the other children ; 
‘¢and why did Francis go away from you?”’ 

‘¢ The lady called him by his name,”’’ said one of the little 
girls. Mme. Sauviat and Gérard, who were ahead of the 
others, came up at that moment. 

‘‘Who is that woman, dear?’’ said Mme. Graslin, turning 
to Francis. 

“¢T do not know,’’ he said, ‘‘ but no one kisses me like that 
except you and grandmamma, She was crying,’’ he added in 
his mother’s ear. 

‘¢ Shall I run and fetch her?’’ asked Gérard. 

‘“No!’’ said Mme. Graslin, with a curtness very unusual 
with her. 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 247 


With kindly tact, which Véronique appreciated, Gérard 
took the little ones with him and went back to meet the 
others; so that Mme. Sauviat, Mme. Graslin, and Francis 
were left together. 

‘‘What did she say to you?’’ asked Mme. Sauviat, ad- 
dressing her grandson. 

‘*I don’t know. She did not speak French.’’ 

“Did you not understand anything she said?’’ asked 
Véronique. 

**Oh, yes; one thing she said over and over again, that is 
how I can remember it—dear brother / she said.”’ 

Véronique leaned on her mother’s arm and took her child’s 
hand, but she could scarcely walk, and her strength failed her. 

** What is it ? What has happened ?’’ every one 
asked of Mme. Sauviat. ? 

A cry broke from the old Auvergnate: ‘‘Oh! my daughter 
is in danger!’’ she exclaimed, in her guttural accent and 
deep voice. : 

Mme. Graslin had to be carried to her carriage. She or- 
dered Aline to keep beside Francis, and beckoned to Gérard. 

‘© You have been in England, I believe,’’ she said, when 
she had recovered herself; ‘‘do you understand English? 
What do these words mean—dear brother ?”’ 

‘¢ That is very simple,’’ said Gérard, and he explained. 

Véronique exchanged glances with Aline and Mme. Sauviat ; 
the two women shuddered, but controlled their feelings. 
Mme. Graslin sank into a torpor from which nothing roused 
her; she did not heed the gleeful voices as the carriages 
started, nor the splendor of the sunset light on the meadows, 
the even pace of the horses, nor the laughter of the friends 
who followed them on horseback at a gallop. Her mother 
bade the man drive faster, and her carriage was the first to 
reach the chateau. When the rest arrived they were told 
that Véronique had gone to her room, and would see no 
one. 








248 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘I am afraid that Mme. Graslin must have received a fatal 
wound,’’ Gérard began, speaking to his friends. 

‘¢ Where ? How ?’’ asked they. 

‘¢In the heart,’’ answered Gérard. 

Two days later Roubaud set out for Paris. He had seen 
that Mme. Graslin’s life was in danger, and to save her he 
had gone to summon the first doctor in Paris to give his opin- 
ion of the case. But Véronique had only consented to see 
Roubaud to put an end to the importunities of Aline and her 
mother, who begged her to be more careful of herself; she 
knew that she was dying. She declined to see M. Bonnet, 
saying that the time had not yet come; and although all the 
friends who had come from Limoges for her birthday festival 
were anxious to stay with her, she entreated them to pardon 
her if she could not fulfill the duties of hospitality, but she 
needed the most profound solitude. So, after Roubaud’s sud- 
den departure, the guests left the chateau of Montégnac and 
went back to Limoges, not so much in disappointment as in 
despair, for all who had come with Grossetéte adored Véron- 
ique, and were utterly at a loss as to the cause of this mysteri- 
ous disaster. 

One evening, two days after Grossetéte’s large family party 
had left the chateau, Aline brought a visitor to Mme. Graslin’s 
room. It was Catherine Farrabesche. At first Catherine 
stood glued to the spot, so astonished was she at this sudden 
change in her mistress, the features so drawn. 

‘¢Good God! madame, what harm that poor girl has done! 
If only we could have known, Farrabesche and I, we would 
never have taken her in. She has just heard that madame is 
ill, and sent me to tell Mme. Sauviat that she should like to 
speak to her.’’ 

‘* Here !’’ cried Véronique. . ‘‘ Where is she at this mo- 
ment ?”’ 

‘¢My husband took her over to the chalet.”’ ; 

‘*Good,’’ said Mme. Graslin; ‘‘leave us, and tell Farra- 





VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 249 


besche to go. Tell the lady to wait, and my mother will go 
to see her.”’ 

At nightfall Véronique, leaning on her mother’s arm, crept 
slowly across the park to the chalet. The moon shone with 
its most brilliant glory, the night air was soft ; the two women, 
both shaken with emotion that they could not conceal, 
received in some sort the encouragement of nature. From 
moment to moment Mme. Sauviat stopped and made her 
daughter rest ; for Véronique’s sufferings were so poignant that 
it was nearly midnight before they reached the path that 
turned down through the wood to the meadows, where the 
chalet roof sparkled like silver. ‘The moonlight on the surface 
of the still water lent it a pearly hue. The faint noises of the 
night, which travel so far in the silence, made up a delicate 
harmony of sound. 

Véronique sat down on the bench outside the chalet in the 
_midst of the glorious spectacle beneath the starry skies. The 
murmur of two voices and footfalls on the sands made by two 
persons still some distance away was borne to her by the 
water, which transmits every sound in the stillness as faith- 
fully as it reflects everything in its calm surface. There was 
an exquisite quality in the intonation of one of the voices, by 
which Véronique recognized the curé, and with the rustle of 
his cassock was blended the light sound of a silk dress. 
Evidently there was a woman. 

‘‘Let us go in,’’ she said to her mother. Mme. Sauviat 
and Véronique sat down on a manger in the low, large room 
built for a cow-shed. 

“‘T am not blaming you at all, my child,’’ the curé was 
saying; ‘‘but you may be the innocent cause of an irrepara- 
ble misfortune, for she is the life and soul of this wide coun- 
tryside.’’ 

‘‘Oh, monsieur ! I will go to-night,’’ the stranger woman’s 
voice answered ; ‘‘ but—I can say this to you—it will be like 
death to me to leave my country a second time. If I had 


250 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


stayed a day longer in that horrible New York or in the United 
States, where there is neither hope nor faith nor charity, I 
should have died without any illness. The air I was breath- 
ing hurt my chest, the food did me no good, I was dying ~ 
though I looked full of life and health. When I stepped on 
board the suffering ceased; I felt as if I were in France. 
Ah, monsieur! I have seen my mother and my brother’s wife 
die of grief. And then my grandfather and grandmother 
Tascheron died—died, dear M. Bonnet, in spite of the un- 
heard-of prosperity of Tascheronville Yes. Our father 
began a settlement, a village in Ohio, and now the village is 
almost a town. One-third of the land thereabouts belongs to 
our family, for God has watched over us all along, and the farms 
have done well, our crops are magnificent, and we are rich— 
so rich that we managed to build a Catholic church. The 
whole town is Catholic; we will not allow any other worship, 
and we hope to convert all the endless sects about us by our 
example. The true faith is in a minority in that dreary, 
mercenary land of the dollar, a land which chills one to the 
soul. Still I would go back to die there sooner than to do 
the least harm here or give the slightest pain to the mother 
of our dear Francis. Only take me to the parsonage house 
to-night, dear M. Bonnet, so that I can pray awhile on hes 
grave; it was just that that drew me here, for as I came nearer 
and nearer the place where /e lies I felt quite a different being: 
No, I did not believe I should feel so happy here oe 

‘Very well,’’ said the curé ; ‘‘come, let usgo. If at some 
future day you can come back without evil consequences, I 
will write to tell you, Denise; but perhaps after this visit to 
your old home you may feel able to live yonder without suffer- 
in ? 











‘*Leave this country now when it is so beautiful here! 
Just see what Mme. Graslin has made of the Gabou!”’ she 
added, pointing to the moonlit lake. ‘‘ And then all this will _ 
belong to our dear Francis” 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 251 


“You shall not go, Denise,’’ said Mme. Graslin, appear- 
ing in the stable doorway. 

Jean-Francois Tascheron’s sister clasped her hands at the 
sight of this ghost who spoke to her; for Véronique’s white 
face in the moonlight looked unsubstantial as a shadow against 
the dark background of the open stable-door. Her eyes 
glittered like two stars. 

**No, child, you shall not leave the country you have 
traveled so far to see, and you shall be happy here, unless 
God should refuse to second my efforts ; for God, no doubt, 
has sent you here, Denise.’ 

She took the astonished girl’s hand in hers, and went with 
her down the path towards the opposite shore of the lake. 
Mme. Sauviat and the curé, left alone, sat down on the bench. 

*¢ Let her have her way,’’ murmured Mme. Sauviat. 

A few minutes later Véronique returned alone ; her mother 
and the curé brought her back to the chateau. Doubtless she 
had thought of some plan of action which suited the mystery, 
for nobody saw Denise, no one knew that she had come 
back. 

Mme. Graslin took to her bed, nor did she leave it. 
Every day she grew worse. It seemed to vex her that she 
could not rise, for again and again she made vain efforts to 
get up and take a walk in the park. One morning in early 
June, some days after that night at the chalet, she made a 
violent effort and rose and tried to dress herself, as if for a 
festival. She begged Gérard to lend her his arm; for her 
friends came daily for news of her, and when Aline said that 
her mistress meant to go out they all hurried up to the chateau. 
Mme. Graslin had summoned all her remaining strength to 
spend it on this last walk. She gained her object by a 
violent spasmodic effort of the will, inevitably followed by a 
deadly reaction. 

‘¢ Let us go to the chalet—and alone,”’ she said to Gérard. 
The tones of her voice were soft, and there was something 


252 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


like coquetry in her glance. ‘‘ This is my last escapade, for 
I dreamed last night that the doctors had come.” — 

‘¢ Would you like to see your woods ?’’ asked Gérard. 

‘‘For the last time. lBut,’’ she added, in coaxing tones, 
«‘T have some strange proposals to make to you.”’ 

Gérard, by her direction, rowed her across the second 
_ lake, when she had reached it on foot. He was at a loss to 
understand such a journey, but she indicated the summer- 
house as their destination, and he plied his oars. 

There was a long pause. Her eyes wandered over the hill- 
sides, the water, and the sky ; then she spoke. 

‘* My friend, it is a strange request that I am about to make 
to you, but I think that you are the man to obey me.”’ 

‘‘In everything,’’ he said, ‘‘ sure as Iam that you cannot 
will anything but good.”’ 

‘*T want you to marry,’’ she said; ‘ you will fulfill the 
wishes of a dying woman, who is certain that she is securing 
your happiness.”’ 

‘‘T am too ugly!’’ said Gérard. 

‘¢ She is pretty, she is young, she wants to live in Mon- 
tégnac ; and if you marry her, you will do something towards 
making my last moments easier. We need not discuss her 
qualities. I tell you this, that she is a woman of a thousand ; 
and as for her charms, youth, and beauty, the first sight will 
suffice, we shall see her in a moment in the summer-house. 
On our way back you shall give me your answer, a ‘ Yes’ or 
a ‘No,’ in sober earnest.”’ 

Mme. Graslin smiled as she saw the oars move more swiftly 
after this confidence. Denise, who was living out of sight in 
the island sanctuary, saw Mme. Graslin, and hurried to the 
door. Véronique and Gérard came in. In spite of herself, 
the poor girl flushed as she met the eyes that Gérard turned 
upon her; Denise’s beauty was an agreeable surprise to him. 

**La Curieux does not let you want for anything, does 
she?’’ asked Véronique. 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 253 


‘Look, madame,”’ said Denise, pointing to the breakfast 
table. 

“This is M. Gérard, of whom I have spoken to you,” 
Véronique went on. ‘‘ He will be my son’s guardian, and 
when I am dead you will all live together at the chateau until 
Francis comes of age.”’ 

**Oh, madame! don’t talk like that.’’ 

«¢ Just look at me, child! ’’ said Véronique, and all at once 
she saw tears in the girl’s eyes. ‘‘She comes from New 
York,’’ she added, turning to Gérard. 

This by way of putting both on a footing of acquaintance. 
Gérard asked questions of Denise, and Mme. Graslin left 
them to chat, going to look out over the view of the last lake 
on the Gabou. At six o’clock Gérard and Véronique rowed 
back to the chalet. 

‘* Well ?’’ queried she, looking at her friend. 

“¢ You have my word.”’ 

*¢ You may be without prejudices,’’ Véronique began, ‘‘ but 
you ought to know how it was that she was obliged to 
leave the country, poor child, brought back by a home-sick 
longing.”’ 

“A slip?”’ 

«¢ Oh, no,’’ said Véronique, ‘‘ or should I introduce her to 
you? She is the sister of a workman who died on the 
scaffold ———”’ 

‘€Oh! Tascheron, who murdered old Pingret a 

‘Ves. She isa murderer’s sister,’’ said Mme. Graslin, 
with inexpressible irony in her voice; ‘‘ you can take back 
your word.”’ 

She went no further. Gérard was compelled to carry her 
to the bench at the chalet, and for some minutes she lay there 
unconscious. Gérard, kneeling beside her, said, as soon as 
she opened her eyes— 

‘J will marry Denise.’’ 

Mme. Graslin made him rise, she took his head in her 





254 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


hands, and set a kiss on his forehead. Then, seeing that he 
was astonished to be thus thanked, she grasped his hand and 
said— 

‘¢ You will soon know the meaning of this puzzle. Let us 
try to reach the terrace again, our friends are there. It is 
very late, and I feel very weak, and yet I should like to bid 
farewell from afar to this dear plain of mine.”’ 

The weather had been intolerably hot all day ; and though 
the storms, which did so much damage that year in different 
parts of Europe and in France itself, respected the Limousin, 
there had been thunder along the Loire, and the air began to 
grow fresher. The sky was so pure that the least details on 
the horizon were sharp and clear. What words can describe 
the delicious concert of sounds, the smothered hum of the 
township, now alive with workers returning from the fields? 
It would need the combined work of a great landscape 
painter and a painter of figures to do justice to such a picture. 
Is there not, in fact, a subtle connection between the lassitude 
of nature and the laborer’s weariness, an affinity of mood 
hardly to be rendered? In the tepid twilight of the dog 
days, the rarefied air gives its full significance to the least 
sound made by every living thing. 

The women sit chatting at their doors with a bit of work 
even then in their hands, as they wait for the good man who, 
probably, will bring the children home. The smoke going 
up from the roofs is the sign of the last meal of the day and 
the gayest for the peasants; after it they will sleep. The stir 
at that hour is the expression of happy and tranquil thoughts 
in those who have finished their day’s work. There is a very 
distinct difference between their evening and morning snatches 
of song; for in this the village-folk are like the birds, the 
last twitterings at night are utterly unlike their notes at dawn. 
All nature joins in the hymn of rest at the end of the day, as 
in the hymn of gladness at sunrise ; all things take the softly- 
blended hues that the sunset throws across the fields, tingeing 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 255 


the dusty roads with mellow light. If any should be bold 
enough to deny the influences of the fairest hour of the day, 
the very flowers would convict him of falsehood, intoxicating 
him with their subtlest scents, mingled with the tenderest 
sounds of insects the amorous faint twitter of birds. 

Thin films of mist hovered above the ‘ water-lanes’’ that 
furrowed the plain below the township. The poplars and 
acacias and sumach trees, planted in equal numbers along the 
roads, had grown so tall already that they shaded it, and in the 
wide fields on either side the large and celebrated herds of 
cattle were scattered about in groups, some still browsing, 
others chewing the cud. Men, women, and children were 
busy getting in the last of the hay, the most picturesque of 
all field-work. The evening air, less languid since the sudden 
breath of coolness after the storms, brought the wholesome 
scents of mown grass and swathes of hay. ‘The least details 
in the beautiful landscape stood out perfectly sharp and clear. 

There was some fear for the weather. The ricks were being 
finished in all haste ; men hurried about them with loaded 
forks, raked the heaps together, and loaded the carts. Out in 
the distance the scythes were still busy, the women were turn- 
ing the long swathes that looked like hatched lines across the 
fields into dotted rows of haycocks. 

Sounds of laughter came up from the hayfields, the workers 
frolicked over their work, the children shouted as they buried 
each other in the heaps. Every figure was distinct, the 
women’s petticoats, pink, red, or blue, their kerchiefs, their 
bare arms and legs, the wide-brimmed straw hats of field- 
workers, the men’s shirts, the white trousers that nearly all 
of them wore. 

The last rays of sunlight fell like a bright dust over the long 
lines of poplar trees by the channels which divided up the 
plain into fields of various sizes, and lingered caressingly over 
the groups of men, women, and children, horses and carts and 
cattle. The shepherds and herdsmen began to: gather their 


256 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


flocks together with the sound of their horns. The plain 
seemed so silent and so full of sound, a strange antithesis, but 
only strange to those who do not know the splendors of the © 
fields. Loads of green fodder came into the township from 
every side. There was something indescribably somnolent in 
the influence of the scene, and Véronique, between the curé 
and Gérard, uttered no word. 

At last they came to a gap made by a rough track that led 
from the houses ranged below the terrace to the parsonage 
house and the church; and, looking down into Montégnac, 
Gérard and M. Bonnet saw the upturned faces of the women, 
men, and children, all looking at them. Doubtless it was 
Mme. Graslin more particularly whom they followed with 
their eyes. And what affection and gratitude there were in 
their way of doing this! With what blessings did they not 
greet Véronique’s appearance! With what devout intentness 
they watched the three benefactors of a whole countryside! 
It was as if man added a hymn of gratitude to all the songs 
of evening. While Mme. Graslin walked with her eyes set 
on the magnificent distant expanse of green, her dearest crea- 
tion, the mayor and the curé watched the groups below. 
There was no mistake about their expression ; grief, melan- 
choly, and regret, mingled with hope, were plainly visible in 
them all. There was not a soul in Montégnac but knew how 
that M. Roubaud had gone to Paris to fetch some great doctors, 
and that the beneficent lady of the canton was nearing the 
end of a fatal illness. On market-days, in every place for 
thirty miles round, the peasants asked the Montégnac folk, 
‘* How is your mistress?’’ And so the great thought of death 
hovered over this countryside, amid the fair picture of the 
hayfields. 

Far off in the plain, more than one mower sharpening his 
scythe, more than one girl leaning on her rake, or farmer 
among his stacks of hay, looked up and paused thoughtfully 
to watch Mme. Graslin, ‘their great lady, the pride of the 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 257 


Corréze. They tried to discover some hopeful sign, or 
watched her admiringly, prompted by a feeling which put 
work out of their minds. ‘She is out of doors, so she must 
be better!’’ The simple phrase was on all lips. 

Mme. Graslin’s mother was sitting at the end of the terrace. 
Véronique had placed a cast-iron garden-seat in the corner, so 
that she might sit there and look down into the churchyard 
through the balustrade. Mme. Sauviat watched her daughter 
as she walked along the terrace, and her eyes filled with tears. 
She knew something of the preternatural effort which Véron- 
ique was making; she knew that even at that moment her 
daughter was suffering fearful pain, and that it was only a 
heroic effort of will that enabled her to stand. Tears, almost 
like tears of blood, found their way down among the sun- 
burned wrinkles of a face like parchment, that seemed as if it 
could not alter one crease for any emotion any more. Little 
Graslin, standing between M. Ruffin’s knees, cried for sym- 
pathy. 

«What is the matter, child?’’ the tutor asked sharply. 

*¢ Grandmamma is crying dé: 

M. Ruffin’s eyes had been fixed on Mme. Graslin, who was 
coming towards them; he looked at Mme. Sauviat; the 
Roman matron’s face, stony with sorrow and wet with tears, 
gave him a great shock. That dumb grief had invested the 
old woman with a certain grandeur and sacredness. 

‘¢ Madame, why did you let her go out ?”’ asked the tutor. 

Véronique was coming nearer. She walked like a queen, 
with admirable grace in her whole bearing. And Mme. 
Sauviat knew that she should outlive her daughter, and in the 
cry of despair that broke from her a secret escaped that re- 
vealed many things which roused curiosity. 

**To think of it! She walks and wears a horrible hair shirt 
always pricking her skin !’’ 

The young man’s blood ran cold at her words; he could 
not be insensible to the exquisite grace of Véronique’s move- 

17 





258 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


ments, and shuddered as he thought of the cruel, unrelenting 
mastery that the soul must have gained over the body. A 
Parisienne famed for her graceful figure, the ease of her car- 
riage and bearing, might perhaps have feared comparison with 
Véronique at that moment. 

‘*She has worn it for thirteen years, ever since the child 
was weaned,’’ the old woman said, pointing to young Graslin. 
‘She has worked miracles here ; and if they but knew her life, 
they might put her among the saints. Nobody has seen her 
eat since she came here, do you know why? Aline brings her 
a bit of dry bread three times a day on a great platter full of 
ashes, and vegetables cooked in water without any salt, on a 
red earthenware dish that they put a dog’s food in! Yes. 
That is the way she lives who has given life to the canton. 
She says her prayers kneeling on the hem of her cilice. She 
says that if she did not practice these austerities she could not 
wear the smiling face you see. I am telling you this’’ (and 
the old woman’s voice dropped lower) ‘‘ for you to tell it to the 
doctor that M. Roubaud has gone to fetch from Paris. If he 
will prevent my daughter from continuing these penances, 
they might save her yet (who knows ?), though the hand of 
death is on her head. Look! Ah, I must be very strong to 
have borne all these things for fifteen years.’’ 

The old woman took her grandson’s hand, raised it, and 
passed it over her forehead and cheeks as if some restorative 
balm communicated itself in the touch of the little hand ; then 
she set a kiss upon it, a kiss full of the love which is the secret of 
grandmothers no less than mothers. By this time Véronique 
was only a few paces distant, Clousier was with her, and the 
curé and Gérard. MHer face, lit up by the setting sun, was 
radiant with awful beauty. © 

One thought, steadfast amid many inward troubles, seemed 
to be written in the lines that furrowed the sallow forehead 
in long folds piled one above the other, like clouds, The 
outlines of her face, now completely colorless, entirely white 


i 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 259 


with the dead olive-tinged whiteness of plants grown without 
sunlight, were thin but not withered, and showed traces of 
great physical suffering produced by mental anguish. She 
had quelled the body through the soul, and the soul through 
the body. So completely worn out was she that she resem- 
bled her past self only as an old woman resembles her portrait 
painted in girlhood. The glowing expression of her eyes 
spoke of the absolute domination of a Christian will over a 
body reduced to the subjection required by religion, for in 
this woman the flesh was at the mercy of the spirit. As in 
profane poetry Achilles dragged the dead body of Hector, 
victoriously she dragged it over the stormy ways of life; and 
thus for fifteen years she had compassed the heavenly Jerusa- 
lem which she had hoped to enter, not as a thief, but amid 
triumphant acclamations. Never was anchorite amid the 
parched and arid deserts of Africa more master of his senses 
than Véronique in her splendid chateau in a rich land of soft 
and luxurious landscape, nestling under the mantle of the 
great forest where science, heir to Moses’ rod, had caused 
plenty to spring forth and the prosperity and the welfare of a 
whole countryside. Véronique was looking out over the 
results of twelve years of patience, on the accomplishment of 
a task on which a man of ability might have prided himself; 
but with the gentle modesty which Pontorno’s brush had 
depicted in the expression of his symbolical ‘‘ Christian 
Chastity ’’—with her arms about the unicorn. Her two com- 
panions respected her silent mood when they saw that she was 
gazing over the vast plain, once sterile, and now fertile; the 
devout lady of the manor went with folded arms and eyes 
fixed on the point where the road reached the horizon. 

Suddenly she stopped when but two paces away from Mme. 
Sauviat, who watched her as Christ’s mother must have gazed 
at her Son upon the cross. Véronique raised her hand and 
pointed to the spot where the road turned off to Mon- 
tégnac, 


260 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘‘Do you see that caléche and the four post-horses?’’ she 
asked, smiling. ‘‘That is M. Roubaud. He is coming 
back. We shall soon know now how many hours I have 
to live.’’ 

** Hours /’’ echoed Gérard. 

‘*Did I not tell you that this was my last walk?’’ she said. 
*« Did I not come to see this beautiful view in all its glory for 
the last time ?’”’ 

She indicated the fair meadow land, lit up by the last 
rays of the sun, and the township below. All the village 
had come out and stood in the square in front of the 
church, 

‘*Ah!’’ she went on, ‘‘let me think that there is God’s 
benediction in the strange atmospheric conditions that have 
favored our hay-harvest. Storms all about us, rain and 
hail and thunder have laid waste pitilessly and incessantly, 
but not here. The people think so; why should not I 
follow their example? I need so much to find some good 
augury on earth for that which awaits me when my eyes 
shall be closed !’’ 

Her child came to her, took his mother’s hand, and laid it 
on his hair. The great eloquence of that movement touched 
Véronique ; with preternatural strength she caught him up, 
held him on her left arm a moment as she used to hold him 
as a child at the breast, and kissed him. ‘‘ Do you see this 
land, my boy?’”’ she said. ‘‘ You must go on with your 
mother’s work when you are a man.”’ 

Then the curé spoke sadly: ‘‘ There are a very few strong 
and privileged natures who are permitted to see death face to 
face, to fight a long duel with him, and to show courage and 
skill that strike others with admiration ;. this is the dreadful 
spectacle that you give us, madame; but, perhaps, you are 
somewhat wanting in pity for us. Leave us at least the hope 
that you are mistaken, that God will permit you to finish all 
that you have begun,”’ | 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 261 


*«T have done nothing save through you, my friend,’’ said 
she. ‘‘ It was in my power to be useful to you; it isso no 
longer. Everything aboutus is green; there is no desolate 
waste here now, save my own heart. You knowit, dear curé, 
you know that I can only find peace and pardon ¢here ” 

She held out her hand over the churchyard. She had never 
said so much since the day when she first came to Montégnac 
and fainted away on that very spot. The curé gazed at his 
penitent ; and, accustomed as he had been for long to read 
her thoughts, he knew from those simple words that he had 
won a fresh victory. It must have cost Véronique a terrible 
effort over herself to break a twelve years’ silence with such 
pregnant words; and the curé clasped his hands with the 
devout fervor familiar to him, and looked with deep religious 
emotion on the family group about him. All their secrets 
had passed through his heart. 

Gérard looked bewildered ; the words “‘ peace and pardon ’”’ 
seemed to sound strangely in his ears; M. Ruffin’s eyes were 
fixed in a sort of dull amazement on Mme. Graslin. And 
meanwhile the caléche sped rapidly along the road, threading 
its way from tree to tree. 

‘< There are five of them!’’ said the curé, who could see 
and count the travelers. 

‘¢ Five!’’ exclaimed M. Gérard. ‘‘ Will five of them know 
more than two?”’ 

«¢ Ah!’’ murmured Mme. Graslin, who leaned on the curé’s 
arm, ‘‘there is the public prosecutor. ‘‘ What does he come 
to do here ?”’ 

«¢ And papa Grossetéte too! ’’ cried Francis. 

‘¢ Madame, take courage, be worthy of yourself,’”’ said the 
curé. He drew Mme. Graslin, who was leaning heavily on 
him, a few paces aside. 

‘¢ What does he want?”’ she said for all answer, and she 
went to lean against the balustrade. ‘‘Mother!’’ she ex- 
claimed, despairingly. 





262 ‘ THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Mme. Sauviat sprang forward with an activity that belied 
her years. 

‘I shall see him again ”” said Véronique. 

‘*If he is coming with M. Grossetéte,’’ said the curé, ‘it 
can only be with good intentions, of course.’’ 

‘* Ah! sir, my daughter is dying!’’ cried Mme. Sauviat, 
seeing the change that passed over Mme. Graslin’s face at the 
words. ‘How will she endure such cruel agitations?> M. 
Grossetéte has always prevented that man from coming to see 
Véronique 

Véronique’s face flamed. 

«‘So you hate him, do you?”’ the noes Bonnet asked, 
turning to his penitent. 

«* She left Limoges lest all Limoges should know her secrets,”’ 
said Mme. Sauviat, terrified by that sudden change wrought 
in Mme. Graslin’s drawn features. 

‘Do you not see that his presence will poison the hours 

that remain to me, when heaven alone should be in my 
thoughts? He is nailing me down to earth!”’ cried Véron- 
ique. 
The curé took Mme. Graslin’s arm once more, and con- 
strained her to walk a few paces; when they were alone, he 
looked full at her with one of those angelic looks which calm 
the most violent tumult in the soul. 

‘‘Tf it is thus,’’ he said, ‘‘I, as your confessor, bid you to 
receive him, to be kind and gracious to him, to lay aside this 
garment of anger, and to forgive him as God will forgive you. 
Can there be a taint of passion in the soul that I deemed 
purified? Burn this last grain of incense on the altar of 
penitence, lest all shall be one lie in you.”’ 

‘« There was still this last struggle to make, and it is made,”’ 
she said, drying her eyes. ‘‘ The evil one was lurking in the 
last recess in my heart, and doubtless it was God who put into 
M. de Granville’s heart the thought that sends him here. How 
many times will He smite me yet?’’ she cried. 








VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 263 


She stopped as if to put up an inward prayer; then she 
turned to Mme. Sauviat, and said in a low voice: 

**Mother dear, be nice and kind to M. le Procureur 
général.”’ 

In spite of herself, the old Auvergnate shuddered feverishly. 

** There is no hope left,’’ she said, as sne caught at the 
curé’s hand. 

As she spoke, the cracking of the postillion’s whip announced 
that the caléche was climbing the avenue; the great gateway 
stood open, the carriage turned in the courtyard, and in 
another moment the travelers came out upon the terrace. 
Beside the public prosecutor and M. Grossetéte, the arch- 
bishop had come (M. Dutheil was in Limoges for Gabriel de 
Rastignac’s consecration as bishop), and M. Roubaud came 
arm in arm with Horace Bianchon, one of the greatest 
doctors in Paris. 

*¢ You are welcome,’’ said Véronique, addressing her guests, 
*‘and you’’ (holding out a hand to the public prosecutor and 
grasping his) ‘‘ especially welcome.”’ 

M. Grossetéte, the archbishop, and Mme. Sauviat ex-_ 
changed glances at this; so great was their astonishment 
that it overcame the profound discretion of old age. 

«© And I thank him who brought you here,’’ Véronique 
went on, as she looked on the Comte de Granville’s face for 
the first time in fifteen years. ‘‘I have borne you a grudge 
for a long time, but now I know that I have done you an 
injustice ; you shall know the reason of all this if you will 
stay here in Montégnac for two days.’’ She turned to Horace 
Bianchon—‘ This gentleman will confirm my apprehensions, 
no doubt.’’ Then to the archbishop—‘‘ It is God surely 
who sends you to me, my lord,’’ she said with a bow. ‘‘ For 
our old friendship’s sake you will not refuse to be with me in 
my last moments. By what grace, I wonder, have I all those 
who have loved me and sustained me all my life about me 
now?” 


264 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


At the word ‘‘love’’ she turned with graceful, deliberate 
intent towards M. de Granville ; the kindness in her manner 
brought tears into his eyes. There was a deep silence. The 
two doctors asked themselves what witchcraft it was that 
enabled the woman before them to stand upright while endur- 
ing the agony which she must suffer. The other three were so 
shocked at the change that illness had wrought in her that 
they could only communicate their thoughts by the eyes. 

‘‘Permit me to go with these gentlemen,’”’ she said, with 
her unvarying grace of manner; “it is an urgent question.” 
She took leave of her guests, and, leaning upon the two 
doctors, went towards the chateau so slowly and painfully that 
it was evident that the end was at hand. 

The archbishop looked at the curé. 

‘©M. Bonnet,’’ he said, ‘‘ you have worked wonders ! ”’ 

‘* Not I, but God, my lord,’’ answered the other. 

‘¢ They said that she was dying,’’ exclaimed M. Grossetéte ; 
‘why, she is dead! ‘There is nothing left but a spirit os 

‘¢ A soul,’’ said M. Gérard. 

‘¢ She is the same as ever,’’ cried the public prosecutor. 

‘¢She is a Stoic after the manner of the old Greek Zeno,’’ 
said the tutor. 

Silently they went along the terrace and looked out over 
the landscape that glowed a most glorious red color in the 
light shed abroad by the fires of the sunset. 

‘*Tt is thirteen years since I saw this before,’’ said the arch- 
bishop, indicating the fertile fields, the valley, and the hill 
above Montégnac, ‘‘so for me this miracle is as extraordi- 
nary as another which I have just witnessed ; for how can you 
let Mme. Graslin stand upright? She ought to be lying in 
bed——”’ ‘ 

‘*So she was,’’ said Mme. Sauviat. ‘‘She never left her 
bed for ten days, but she was determined to get up to see 
this place for the last time.’’ 

‘‘T understand,’’ said M. de Granville. ‘‘She wished to 





VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 265 


say farewell to all that she had called into being, but she ran 
the risk of dying here on the terrace.’’ 

‘*M. Roubaud said that she was not to be thwarted,’’ said 
Mme. Sauviat. _ 

*‘What a marvelous thing!’’ exclaimed the archbishop, 
whose eyes never wearied of wandering over the view. ‘She 
has made the waste into sown fields. But we know, mon- 
sieur,’’ he added, turning to Gérard, ‘‘ that your skill and 
your labors have been a great factor in this.”’ | 

** We have only been her laborers,’’ the mayor said. ‘‘ Yes; 
we are only the hands, she was the head.’’ 

Mme. Sauviat left the group, and went to hear what the 
opinion of the doctor from Paris was. 

‘* We shall stand in need of heroism to be present at this 
death-bed,’’ said the public prosecutor, addressing the arch- 
bishop and the curé. 

** Yes,’’ said M. Grossetéte ; ‘‘ but for such a friend, great 
things should be dqne.’’ 

While they waited and came and went, oppressed by heavy 
thoughts, two of Mme. Graslin’s tenants came up. They had 
come, they said, on behalf of a whole township waiting in 
painful suspense to hear the verdict of the doctor from Paris. 

‘They are in consultation, we know nothing as yet, my 
friends,’’ said the archbishop. 

M. Roubaud came hurrying towards them, and at the sound 
of his quick footsteps the others hastened to meet him. 

*€Well?’’ asked the mayor. . 

‘* She has not forty-eight hours to live,’’ answered M. Rou- 
baud. ‘‘ The disease has developed while I was away. M. 
Bianchon cannot understand how she could walk. These sel- 
dom seen phenomena are always the result of great exaltation 
of mind. And so, gentlemen,’’ he added, speaking to the 
churchmen, ‘‘she has passed out of our hands and into yours; 
science is powerless ; my illustrious colleague thinks that there 
is scarcely time for the ceremonies of the church.’’ 


266 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘* Let us put up the prayers appointed for times of great 
calamity,’’ said the curé, and he went away with his parish- 
ioners. ‘* His lordship will no doubt condescend to admin- 
ister the last sacraments.’’ 

The archbishop bowed his head in reply; he could not say 
a word, his eyes were full of tears. The group sat down or 
leaned against the balustrade, and each was deep in his own 
thoughts. The church bells peeled mournfully, the sound of 
many footsteps came up from below, the whole village was 
flocking to theservice. The light of the altar candles gleamed 
through the trees in M. Bonnet’s garden, and then began the 
sounds of chanting. A faintly flushed twilight overspread the 
fields, the birds had ceased to sing, and the only sound in 
the plain was the shrill, melancholy, long-drawn note of the 
frogs. 

‘¢ Let us do our duty,’’ said the archbishop at last, and he 
went slowly towards the house, like a man who carries a burden 
greater than he can bear. 

The consultation had taken place in the great drawing- 
room, a vast apartment which communicated with a state 
bedroom, draped with crimson damask. Here Graslin had 
exhibited to the full the self-made man’s taste for display. 
Véronique had not entered the room half-a-dozen times in 
fourteen years; the great suite of apartments was completely 
useless to her; she had never received visitors in them, but 
the effort she had made to discharge her last obligations and 
to quell her revolted physical nature had left her powerless to 
reach her own rooms. 

The great doctor had taken his patient’s hand and felt her 
pulse, then he looked significantly at M. Roubaud, and the 
two men carried her into the adjoining room and laid her on 
the bed, Aline hastily flinging open the doors forthem. There 
were, of course, no sheets on the state bed; the two doctors 
laid Mme. Graslin at full length on the crimson quilt, Roubaud 
opened the windows, flung back the Venetian shutters, and 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 267 


summoned help. La Sauviat and the servants came hurrying 
to the room ; they lighted the wax-candles (yellow with age) 
in the sconces. 

Then the dying woman smiled. ‘‘It is decreed that my 
death shall be a festival, as a Christian’s death should be.’’ 

During the consultation she spoke again— 

“<The public prosecutor has done his work: I was going; 
he has despatched me sooner——”’ 

The old mother laid a finger on her lips with a warning 
glance. 

‘Mother, I will speak now,’’ Véronique said in answer. 
** Look ! the finger of God is in all this ; I shall die very soon 
in this room hung with red “id 

La Sauviat went out in dismay at the words. 

‘* Aline! ’’ she cried, ‘‘she is speaking out! 

‘* Ah! madame’s mind is wandering,’ said the faithful 
waiting-woman, coming in with the sheets. ‘‘ Send for M. le 
Curé, madame.’’ 

‘* You must undress your mistress,’’ said Bianchon, as soon 
as Aline entered the room. 

«Tt will be very difficult ; madame wears a hair shirt next 
her skin.”’ 

‘What ?’’ the great doctor cried, ‘‘are such horrors still 
practiced in this nineteenth century ?’”’ 

‘*Mme. Graslin has never allowed me to touch the 
stomach,’’ said M. Roubaud. ‘‘ I could learn nothing of her 
complaint save from her face and her pulse, and from what I 
could learn from her mother and her maid.’’ 

Véronique was laid on a sofa while they made the great bed 
ready for her at the farther end of the room. ‘The doctors 
spoke together with lowered voices as La Sauviat and Aline 
made the bed. There was a look terrible to see in the two 
women’s faces; the same thought was wringing both their 
hearts. ‘‘ We are making her bed for the last time—this will 
be her bed of death.”’ 





?? 





268 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


The consultation was brief. In the first place, Bianchon 
insisted that Aline and La Sauviat must cut the patient out of 
the cilice and put her in a nightdress, The two doctors 
waited in the great drawing-room while this was done. Aline 
came out with the terrible instrument of penance wrapped 
in a towel. ‘‘ Madame is just one wound,”’ she told them. 

‘<Madame, you have a stronger will than Napoleon had,” 
said Bianchon, when the two doctors had come in again, and 
Véronique had given clear answers to the questions put to her. 
‘You are preserving your faculties in the last stage of a dis- 
ease in which the Emperor’s brilliant intellect sank. From 
what I know of you, I feel that I owe it to you to tell you 
the truth.”’ 

‘¢T implore you, with clasped hands, to tell it me,’’ she said ; 
‘‘you can measure the strength that remains to me, and I 
have need of all the life that is in me for a few hours yet.”’ 

‘*You must think of nothing but your salvation,’’ said 
Bianchon. 

‘“‘If God grants that body and mind die together,’’ she 
said, with a divinely sweet smile, ‘‘ believe that the favor is 
vouchsafed for the glory of His Church on earth. My mind 
is still needed to carry out a thought from God, while Napoleon 
had accomplished his destiny.’’ 

The two doctors looked at each other in amazement; the 
words were spoken as easily as if Mme. Graslin had been in 
her drawing-room. 

‘¢ Ah! here is the doctor who will heal me,’’ she added, as 
the archbishop entered. 

She summoned all her strength to sit upright to take leave 
of M. Bianchon, speaking graciously, and asking him to 
accept something beside money for the good news which he 
had just brought her; then she whispered a few words to her 
mother, who went out with the doctor. She asked the arch- 
bishop to wait until the curé should come, and seemed to wish 
to rest for a little while. Aline sat by her mistress’ bedside. 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 269 


At midnight Mme. Graslin woke and asked for the arch- 
bishop and the curé. Aline told her that they were in the 
room engaged in prayer for her. With a sign she dismissed 
her mother and the maid, and beckoned the two priests to 
her bed. 

** Nothing of what I shall say is unknown to you, my lord, 
nor to you, M. le Curé. You, my lord archbishop, were the 
first to look into my conscience; at a glance you read almost 
the whole past, and that which you saw was enough for you. 
My confessor, an angel sent by heaven to be near me, knows 
something more; I have confessed all to him, as in duty 
bound. And now I wish to consult you—whose minds are 
enlightened by the spirit of the church; I want to ask you 
how such a woman as I should take leave of this life as a true 
Christian. You, spirits holy and austere, do you think that 
if heaven vouchsafes pardon to the most complete and pro- 
found repentance ever made by a guilty soul, I shall have 
accomplished my whole task here on earth ?”’ 

_ Ves; yes, my daughter,’’ said the archbishop. 

‘*No, my father, no!’’ she cried, sitting upright, and 
lightnings flashed from her eyes. ‘‘ Yonder lies an unhappy 
man in his grave, not many steps away, under the sole weight 
of a hideous crime; here, in this sumptuous house, there is a 
woman crowned with the aureola of good deeds and a virtu- 
ous life. They bless the woman ; they curse him, poor boy. 
On the criminal they heap execrations, I enjoy the good 
opinion of all; yet most of the blame of his crime is mine, 
and a great part of the good for which they praise me so and 
are grateful to me is his; cheat that lam! I have the credit. 
of it, and he, a martyr to his loyalty to me, is covered with 
shame. In a few hours I shall die, and a whole canton will 
weep for me, a whole department will praise my good deeds, 
my piety, and my virtues ; and he died reviled and scorned, 
a whole town crowding about to see him die, for hate of the 
murderer! You, my judges, are indulgent to me, but I hear 


270 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


an imperious voice within me that will not let me rest. Ah! 
God’s hand, more heavy than yours, has been laid upon me 
day by day, as if to warn me that all was not expiated yet. 
My sin shall be redeemed by public confession. Oh! he was 
happy, that criminal who went to a shameful death in the face 
of earth and heaven! But as for me, I cheated justice, and 
I am still a cheat! All the respect shown to me has been like 
mockery, not a word of praise but has scorched my heart 
like fire. And now the public prosecutor has come here. Do 
you not see that the will of heaven is in accordance with this 
voice that cries ‘ Confess ?’’’ 

Both priests, the prince of the church and the simple 
country parson, the two great luminaries, remained silent, and — 
kept their eyes fixed on the ground. So deeply moved 
were the judges by the greatness and the submission of the 
sinner that they could not pass sentence. After a pause, the 
archbishop raised his noble face, thin and worn with the daily 
practice of austerity in a devout life. 

‘« My child,”’ he said, ‘* you are going beyond the command- 
ments of the church. It is the glory of the church that she 
adapts her dogmas to the conditions of life in every age; for 
the church is destined to make the pilgrimage of the centuries 
side by side with humanity. According to the decision of 
the church, private confession has replaced public confession. 
This substitution has made the new rule of life. The suffer- 
ings which you have endured suffice. Depart in peace. God 
has heard you indeed.”’ 

‘* But is not this wish of a criminal in accordance with the 
rule of the early church, which filled heaven with as many 
saints and martyrs and confessors as there are stars in heaven?”’ 
Véronique cried earnestly. ‘‘Who was it that wrote ‘ Con- 
fess your faults one to another?’ Was it not one of our 
Saviour’s own immediate disciples? Let me confess my 
shame publicly upon my knees. That will be an expiation 
of the wrong that I have done to the world, and to a family 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 271 


exiled and almost extinct through my sin. The world should 
know that my good deeds are not an offering to God; that 
they are only the just payment of a debt Suppose that, 
when I am gone, some finger should raise the veil of lies that 
covers me ?. Oh, the thought of it brings the supreme hour 
nearer,”’ 

**T see calculation in this, my child,’’ the archbishop said 
gravely. ‘‘There are still strong passions left in you; that 
which I deemed extinguished is “a 

** My lord,” she cried, breaking in upon the speaker, turn- 
ing her fixed horror-stricken eyes on him, ‘‘ I swear to you that 
my heart is purified so far as it may be in a guilty and repent- 
ant woman ; there is no thought left in me now but the thought 
of God.’’ 

** Let us leave heaven’s justice take its course, my lord,’ 
the curé said, in a softened voice. ‘‘ I have opposed this idea 
for four years. It has caused the only differences of opinion 
which have risen between my penitent and me. I have seen 
the very depths of this soul; earth has no hold left there. 
When the tears, sighs, and contrition of fifteen years have 
buried a sin in which two beings shared, do not think that 
there is the least luxurious taint in the long and dreadful 
remorse. For a long while memory has ceased to mingle 
its flames in the most ardent repentance. Yes, many tears 
have quenched so great a fire. I will answer,’’ he said, 
stretching his hand out above Mme. Graslin’s head and raising 
his tear-filled eyes, ‘‘ I will answer for the purity of this arch- 
angel’s soul. I used once to see in this desire a thought of 
reparation to an absent family; it seems as if God Himself 
has sent one member of it here, through one of those acci- 
dents in which His guidance is unmistakably revealed.’’ 

Véronique took the curé’s trembling hand and kissed it. 

‘‘ You have often been harsh to me, dear pastor,’’ she said ; 
‘¢and now, in this moment, I discover where your apostolic 
sweetness lay hidden. You,”’ she said, turning to the arch- 











272 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


bishop, ‘ you, the supreme head of this corner of God’s earthly 
kingdom, be my stay in this time of humiliation. I shall 
prostrate myself as the lowest of women; you will raise me, a 
forgiven soul, equal, it may be, with those who have never 
gone astray.”’ 

The archbishop was silent for a while, engaged, no 
doubt, in weighing the considerations visible to his eagle’s 
glance. 

“ My lord,”’ said the curé, ‘‘deadly blows have been aimed 
at religion. Will not this return to ancient customs, made 
necessary by the greatness both of the sin and the repentance, 
be a triumph which will redound to us?’”’ 

‘¢ They will say that we are fanatics! that we have insisted 
on this cruel scene!’’ and the archbishop fell once more to 
his meditations. 

Just at that moment Horace Bianchon and Roubaud came 
in without knocking at the door. As it opened, Véronique 
saw her mother, her son, and all the servants kneeling in 
prayer. Thecurés of the two neighboring parishes had come 
to assist M. Bonnet ; perhaps also to pay their respects to the 
great archbishop, in whom the church of France saw a car- 
dinal-designate, hoping that some day the Sacred College 
might be enlightened by the advent of an intellect so thor- 
oughly Gallican. 

Horace Bianchon was about to start for Paris; he came to 
bid farewell to the dying lady, and to thank her for her mu- 
nificence. He approached the bed slowly, guessing from the 
manner of the two priests that the inward wound which had 
caused the disease of the body was now under consideration. 
He took Véronique’s hand, laid it on the bed, and felt her 
pulse. The deepest silence, the silence of the fields in a 
summer-night, added solemnity to the scene. Lights shone 
from the great drawing-room, beyond the folding doors, and 
fell upon the little company of kneeling figures, the curés only 
were seated, reading their breviaries. About the crimson bed 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 273 


of state stood the archbishop, in his violet robes, the curé, 
and the two men of science. 

*«She is troubled even in death!’’ said Horace Bianchon. 
Like many men of great genius, he not seldom found grand 
words worthy of the scenes at which he was present. 

The archbishop rose, as if goaded by some inward impulse. 
He called M. Bonnet, and went towards the door. They 
crossed the chamber and the drawing-room, and went out upon 
the terrace, where they walked up and down for a few min- 
utes. As they came in after a consideration of this point of 
ecclesiastical discipline, Roubaud went to meet them. 

‘«M. Bianchon sent me to tell you to be quick; Mme. Gras- 
lin is dying in strange agitation, which is not caused by the 
severe physical pain which she is suffering.’’ 

The archbishop hurried back, and in reply to Mme. Gras- 
lin’s anxious eyes, he said, ‘‘ You shall be satisfied.’’ 

Bianchon (still with his finger on the dying woman’s wrist) 
made an involuntary start of surprise; he gave Roubaud a 
quick look, and then glanced at the priests. 

** My lord, this body is no longer our province,’’ he said, 
**your words brought life in the place of death. You make 
a miracle credible.’’ 

‘«Madame has been nothing but soul this long time 
past,’’ said Roubaud, and Véronique thanked him by a 
glance. 

A smile crossed her face as she lay there, and, with the 
smile that expressed the gladness of a completed expiation, 
the innocent look of the girl of eighteen returned to her. 
The appalling lines traced by inward tumult, the dark color- 
ing, the livid patches, all the details that but lately had con- : 
tributed a certain dreadful beauty to her face, all alterations 
of all kinds, in short, had vanished ; to those who watched 
Véronique, it seemed as if she had been wearing a mask and 
had suddenly dropped it. The wonderful transfiguration by 
which the inward life and nature of this woman were made 

18 


274 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


visible in her features was wrought for the last time. Her 
whole being was purified and illuminated, her face might have 
caught a gleam from the flaming swords of the guardian angels 
about her. She looked once more as she used to look in 
Limoges when they called her ‘‘ the little Virgin.’’ The love 
of God manifestly was yet stronger in her than the guilty love 
had been; the earthly love had brought out all the forces of 
life in her; the love of God dispelled every trace of the in- 
roads of death. A smothered cry was heard. La Sauviat 
appeared ; she sprang to the bed. ‘‘So I see my child again 

~ at last !’’ she exclaimed. ; 

Something in the old woman’s accent as she uttered the two 
words, ‘‘ my child,’’ conjured up such visions of early child- 
hood and its innocence, that those who watched by this heroic 
death-bed turned their heads away to hide their emotion. 
The great doctor took Mme. Graslin’s hand, kissed it, and 
then went his way, and soon the sound of his departing car- 
riage sent echoes over the countryside, spreading the tidings 
that he had no hope of saving the life of her who was the life 
of the country. The archbishop, curé, and doctor, and all 
who felt tired, went to take a little rest. Mme. Graslin her- 
self slept for some hours. When she awoke the dawn was 
breaking ; she asked them to open the windows, she would 
see her last sunrise. 

At ten o’clock in the morning the archbishop, in pontifical 
vestments, came back to Mme. Graslin’s room. Both he and 
M. Bonnet reposed such confidence in her that they made no 
recommendations as to the limits to be observed in her confes- 
sion. Véronique saw other faces of other clergy, for some of 
the curés from neighboring parishes had come. The splendid 
ornaments which Mme. Graslin had presented to her beloved 
parish church lent splendor to the ceremony. Eight children, 
choristers in their red-and-white surplices, stood in a double 
row between the bed and the door of the great drawing-room, 
each of them holding one of the great candlesticks of gilded 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 275 


bronze which Véronique had ordered from Paris. A white- 
haired sacristan on either side of the dais held the banner of 
the church and the crucifix. The servants, in their devotion, 
had removed the wooden altar from the sacristy and erected 
it near the drawing-room door; it was decked and ready for 
the archbishop to say mass. Mme. Graslin was touched by 
an attention which the church pays only to crowned heads. 
The great folding-doors that gave access to the dining-room 
stood wide open, so that she could see the hall of the chateau 
filled with people ; nearly all the village was there. 

Her friends had seen to everything, none-but the people 
of the house stood in the drawing-room; and before them, 
grouped about the door of her room, she saw her intimate 
friends and those whose discretion might be trusted. M. 
Grossetéte, M. de Granville, Roubaud, Gérard, Clousier, and 
Ruffin stood foremost among these. All of them meant to 
stand upright when the time came, so that the dying woman’s 
confession should not travel beyond them. Other things 
favored this design, for the sobs of those about her drowned 
her voice. 

Two of these stood out dreadfully conspicuous among the 
rest. The first was Denise Tascheron. In her foreign dress, 
made with Quakerly simplicity, she was unrecognizable to any 
of the villagers who might have caught a glimpse of her. Not 
so for the public prosecutor; she was a figure that he was not 
likely to forget, and with her reappearance a dreadful light 
began to dawn on him. Now he had a glimpse of the truth, 
a suspicion of the part which he had played in Mme. Graslin’s 
life, and then the whole truth flashed upon him. Less over- 
awed than the rest by the religious influence, the child of the 
nineteenth century, the man of law felt a cruel sensation of 
dismay ; the whole drama of Véronique’s inner life in the 
H6tel Graslin during Tascheron’s trial opened out before him. 
The whole of that tragic epoch reconstructed itself in his 
memery, lighted up by La Sauviat’s eyes, which gleamed with 


276 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


hate of him not ten’ paces away; those eyes seemed to direct 
a double stream of molten lead upon him. The old woman 
had forgiven him nothing. ‘The impersonation of man’s jus- 
tice felt shudders run through his frame. He stood there 
heart-stricken and pallid, not daring to turn his eyes to the 
bed where the woman he had loved was lying, lived beneath 
the shadow of death’s hand, drawing strength from the very 
magnitude of her offense to quell her agony. Vertigo seized 
on him as he saw Véronique’s shrunken profile, a white out- 
line in sharp relief against the crimson damask. 

The mass began at eleven o’clock. When the curé of Vizay 
had read the epistle, the archbishop divested himself of his 
dalmatic, and took up his station in the doorway— 

‘¢ Christians here assembled to witness the administration 
of extreme unction to the mistress of this house, you who are 
uniting your prayers to those of the church to make interces- 
sion with God for the salvation of her soul, learn that she 
thinks herself unworthy to receive the holy viaticum until she 
has made, for the edification of others, a public confession 
of her greatest sin. We withstood her pious desire, although 
this act of contrition was long in use in the church in the 
earliest Christian times; but as the afflicted woman tells us 
that the confession touches on the rehabilitation of an un- 
happy child of this parish, we leave her free to follow the 
inspirations of repentance.’’ 

After these words, spoken with the benign dignity of a 
shepherd of souls, the archbishop turned and gave place to 
Véronique. The dying woman was seen, supported by her 
mother and the curé, two great and venerable symbols: did 
she not owe her double existence to the earthly mother who 
had borne her, and to the church, the mother of her soul ? 
Kneeling on a cushion, she clasped her hands and meditated 
for a moment to gather up and concentrate the strength to 
speak from some source derived from heaven. There was 
something unspeakably awful in that silent pause. No one 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 277 


dared to look at his neighbor. All eyes were fixed on the 
ground. Yet when Véronique looked up, she met the public 
prosecutor’s glance, and the expression of that white face sent 
the color to her own. 

**T should not have died in peace,’’ Véronique began, in a 
voice unlike her natural tone, ‘‘if I had left behind the false 
impression which each one of you who hears me speak has 
possibly formed of me. In me you see a great sinner, who 
beseeches your prayers, and seeks to merit pardon by the 
public confession of her sin. So deeply has she sinned, so 
fatal were the consequences of her guilt, that it may be that 
no repentance will redeem it. And yet the greater my 
humiliation on earth, the less, doubtless, have I to dread from 
God’s anger in the heavenly kingdom whither I fain would go. 

‘*It is nearly twenty years since my father, who had such 
great belief in me, recommended a son of this parish to my 
care; he had seen in him a wish to live rightly, aptitude, and 
an excellent disposition. This young man was the unhappy 
Jean-Francois Tascheron, who thenceforward attached himself 
to me as his benefactress. How was it that my affection for 
him became a guilty one? ‘That explanation need not, I 
think, be required of me. Yet, perhaps, it might be thought 
that the purest possible motives were imperceptibly transformed 
by unheard-of self-sacrifice, by human frailty, by a host of 
causes which might seem to be extenuations of my guilt. 
But am I the less guilty because our noblest affections were my 
accomplices? I would rather admit, in spite of the barriers 
raised by the delicacy natural to our sex between me and the 
young man whom my father intrusted to me, that I, who by 
my education and social position might regard myself as his 
protegé’s superior, listened, in an evil hour, to the voice of 
the tempter. I soon found that my maternal position brought 
me into contact with him so close that I could not but be 
sensible of his mute and delicate admiration. He was the 
first and only creature to appreciate me at my just value. 


278 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Perhaps, too, I myself was led astray by unworthy considera- 
tions. I thought that I could trust to the discretion of a 
young man who owed everything to me, whom chance had 
placed so far below me, albeit by birth we were equals. In 
fact, I found a cloak to screen my conduct in my name for 
charity and good deeds. Alas! (and this is one of my worst 
sins) I hid my passion in the shadow of the altar. I made 
everything conduce to the miserable triumph of a mad passion, 
the most irreproachable actions, my love for my mother, acts 
of a devotion that was very real and sincere and through so 
many errors—all these things were so many links in a chain 
that bound me. My poor mother, whom I love so much, who 
hears-me even now, was unwittingly and for a long while my 
accomplice. When her eyes were opened, I was too deeply 
committed to my dangerous way, and she found strength to 
keep my secret in the depths of her mother heart. Silence 
in her has thus become the loftiest of virtues. Love for her 
daughter overcame the love of God. Ah! now I solemnly 
relieve her of the load of secrecy which she has carried. She 
shall end her days with no lie in her eyes and brow. May 
her motherhood absolve her, may her noble and sacred old 
age, crowned with virtues, shine forth in all its radiance, now 
that the link which bound her indirectly to touch such infamy 
is severed ve 

Here Véronique’s sobs interrupted her words; Aline made 
her inhale salts. 

“¢ Only one other has hitherto been in this secret, the faith- 
ful servant who does me this last service ; she has, at least, 
feigned not to know what she must have known, but she has 
been in the secret of the austerities by which I have broken 
this weak flesh. So I ask pardon of the world for having 
lived a lie, drawn into that lie by the remorseless logic of the 
world. 

‘¢ Jean-Francois Tascheron is not as guilty as men may have 
thought him. Oh, all you who hear me! I beg of you to 





VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 79 


remember how young he was, and that his frenzy was caused 
at least as much by the remorse which seized on me, as by the 
spell of an involuntary attraction. And more, far more, do 
not forget that it was a sense of honor, if a mistaken sense of 
honor, which caused the greatest disaster of all. Neither of 
us could endure that life of continual deceits. He turned 
from them to my own greatness, and, unhappy that he was, 
sought to make our fatal love as little of a humiliation as 
might be to me. So I was the cause of hiscrime. Driven 
by necessity, the unhappy man, hitherto only guilty of too 
great a love for his idol, chose of all evil actions the one most 
irreparable. I knew nothing of it until the very moment 
when the deed was done. Even as it was being carried out, 
God overturned the whole fabric of crooked designs. I 
heard cries that ring even yet in my ears, and went into the 
house again. I knew that it was a struggle for life and death, 
and that I, the object of this mad endeavor, was powerless to 
interfere. For Tascheron was mad; I bear witness that he 
was mad! % 

Here Véronique looked at the public prosecutor, and a 
déep audible sigh came from Denise. 

‘* He lost his head when he saw his happiness (so he be- 
lieved it to be) destroyed by unforeseen circumstances. Love 
led him astray, then fate dragged him from a misdemeanor to 
a crime, and from a crime to a double murder. At any rate, 
when he left my mother’s house he was an innocent man ; 
when he returned, he was a murderer. I, and I only in the 
world, knew that the crime was not premeditated, nor accom- 
panied by the aggravating circumstances which brought the 
sentence of death on him. A hundred times I determined to 
give myself up to save him, and a hundred times a terrible 
but necessary heroism outweighed all other considerations, 
and the words died on my lips. Surely my presence a few 
steps away must have contributed to give him the hateful, 
base, cowardly courage of a murderer. If he had been 





280 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 





alone, he would have fled It was I who had formed his 
nature, who had given him loftier thoughts and a greater 
heart ; I knew him; he was incapable of anything cowardly 
or base. Do justice to the innocent hand, do justice to him! 
God in His mercy lets him sleep in the grave that you, guess- 
ing doubtless, the real truth, have watered with your tears! 
Punish and curse the guilty thing here before you! When 
once the deed was done, I was horror-struck ; I did all that 
I could to hide it. My father had left a charge to me, a 
childless woman ; I was to bring one child of God’s family 
to God, and I brought him to the scaffold———_ Oh, heap all 
your reproaches upon me! ‘The hour has come!”’ 

Her eyes glittered with fierce pride as she spoke. The 
archbishop, standing behind her, with his pastoral cross held 
out above her head, no longer maintained his impassive 
attitude ; he covered his eyes with his right hand, A smoth- 
ered sound like a dying groan broke the silence, and two 
men—Gérard and Roubaud—caught Denise Tascheron in 
_ their arms. She had swooned away. ‘The fire died down in 
Véronique’s eyes; she looked troubled, but the martyr’s 
serenity soon returned to her face. 

“IT deserve no praise, no blessings, for my conduct here, as 
you know now,”’ she said. ‘‘In the sight of heaven I have 
led a life full of sharp penance, hidden from all other eyes, and 
heaven will value it at its just worth. My outward life has 
been a vast reparation of the evil that I have wrought ; I have 
engraved my repentance in characters ineffaceable upon this 
wide land, ‘a record that will last for ever. It is written 
everywhere in the fields grown green, in the growing town- 
ship, in the mountain streams turned from their courses into 
the plain, once wild and barren, now fertile and productive. 
Not a tree shall be felled here for a century but the peasants 
will tell the tale of the remorse to which they owe its shade. 
In these ways the repentant spirit which should have inspired 
along and useful life will still make its influence felt among 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 281 


you for a long time tocome. All that you should have owed 
to Azs talents and a fortune honorably acquired has been done 
for you by the executrix of his repentance, by her who caused 
his crime. All the wrong done socially has been repaired ; I 
have taken upon myself the work of a life cut short in its 
flower, the life intrusted to my guidance, the life for which I 
must shortly give an account ey 

Here once more the burning eyes were quenched in tears. 
She paused. 

“There is one among those present,’’ she continued, 
‘*whom I have hated with a hate which I thought must be 
eternal, simply because he did no more than his duty. He 
was the first instrument of my punishment. I was too close 
to the deed, my feet were dipped too deep in blood, I was 
bound to hate justice. I knew that there was a trace of evil 
passion in my heart, so long as that spark of anger should 
trouble it; I have had nothing to forgive, I have simply 
purged the corner where the evil one lurked. Whatever the 
victory cost, it is complete.”’ 

The public prosecutor turned a tear-stained face to Véron- 
ique. It was as if man’s justice was remorseful in him. Vér- 
onique, turning her face away to continue her story, met the 
eyes of an old friend; Grossetéte, bathed in tears, stretched 
out his hands entreatingly towards her. ‘‘It is enough! ”’ he 
seemed to say. The heroic woman heard such a chorus of 
sobs about her, received so much sympathy, that she broke 
down ; the balm of the general forgiveness was too much, 
weakness overcame her. Seeing that the sources of her 
daughter’s strength were exhausted, the old mother seemed to 
find in herself the vigor of a young woman ; she held out her 
arms to carry Véronique. 

‘¢ Christians,’’ said the archbishop, ‘‘ you have heard the 
penitent’s confession ; it confirms the decree of man’s justice ; 
it may lay all scruples and anxiety on that score to rest. In 
this confession you should find new reasons for uniting your 





282 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


prayers to those of the church, which offers to God the holy 
sacrifice of the mass to implore His mercy for the sinner after 
so grand a repentance.”’ 

The office was finished. Véronique followed all that was 
said with an expression of such inward peace that she no 
longer seemed to be the same woman. Her face wore a look 
of frank innocence, such as it might have worn in the days 
when, a pure and ingenuous girl, she dwelt under her father’s 
roof. Her brows grew white in the dawn of eternity, her face 
glowed golden in the light of heaven. Doubtless she caught 
something of its mystic harmonies; and in her longing to be 
made one with God on earth for the last time, she exerted all 
her powers of vitality to live. _M. Bonnet came to the bed- 
side and gave her absolution; the archbishop anointed her 
with the holy oil, with a fatherly tenderness that revealed to 
those who stood about how dear he held this sheep that had 
been lost and was found. With that holy anointing the eyes 
that had wrought such mischief on earth were closed to the 
things of earth, the seal of the church was set on those two 
eloquent lips, and the ears that had listened to the inspiration 
of evil were closed for ever. All the senses, mortified by 
penitence, were thus sanctified ; the spirit of evil could have 
no power over this soul. 

Never had all the grandeur and deep meaning of a sacra- 
ment been apprehended more thoroughly than by those who 
saw the church’s care thus justified by the dying woman’s 
confession. After that preparation, Véronique received the 
body of Christ with a look of hope and joy that melted the 
icy barrier of unbelief at which the curé had so often knocked 
in vain. Roubaud, confounded, became a Catholic from that 
moment. 

Awful as the scene was, it was no less touching; and in its 
solemnity, as of the culminating-point of a drama, it might 
have given some painter the subject of a masterpiece. When 
the mournful episode was over, and the words of the Gospel 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 283 


of St. John fell on the ears of the dying woman, she beck- 
oned to her mother to bring Francis back again. (The tutor 
had taken the boy out of the room.) When Francis knelt on 
the step by the bedside, the mother whose sins had been for- 
given felt free to lay her hands in blessing on his head, and so 
she drew her last breath, La Sauviat standing at the post she 
had filled for twenty years, faithful to the end. It was she, a 
heroine after her manner, who closed the eyes of the daughter 
who had suffered so much, and laid a kiss on them. 

Then all the priests and assistants came round the bed, and 
intoned the dread chant De frofundis by the light of the 
flaming torches; and from those sounds the people. of the 
whole countryside kneeling without, together with the friends 
and all the servants praying in the hall, knew that the mother 
of the canton had passed away. Groans and sobs mingled 
with the chanting. The noble woman’s confession had not 

passed beyond the threshold of the drawing-room; it had 
reached none but friendly ears. When the peasants came 
from Montégnac, and all the district round about came in, each 
with a green spray, to bid their benefactress a supreme farewell 
mingled with tears and prayers, they saw a representative of 
man’s justice, bowed down with anguish, holding the cold 
hand of the woman to whom all unwittingly he had meted out 
such a cruel but just punishment. 

Two days later and the public prosecutor, with Grossetéte, 
the archbishop, and the mayor, bore the pall when Mme. 
Graslin was carried to her last resting-place. Amid deep 
silence they laid her in the grave ; no one uttered a word, for 
no one had the heart to speak, and all eyes were full of tears. 

‘¢She isa saint!’’ Everywhere the words were repeated 
along the roads which she had made, in the canton which 
owed its prosperity to her. It was as if the words were sown 
abroad across her fields to quicken the life in them. It struck 
nobody as a strange thing that Mme. Graslin should be buried 
beside Jean-Francois Tascheron. She had not asked this; 


284 THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


but a trace of pitying tenderness in the old mother prompted 
her to bid the sacristan put those together whom earth had 
separated by a violent death, whom one repentance should 
unite in purgatory. 

Mme. Graslin’s will fulfilled all expectations. She founded 
scholarships in the school at Limoges, and beds in the hospital, 
intended for the working classes only. A considerable sum 
(three hundred thousand francs in a period of six years) was 
left to purchase that part of the village called ‘* Tascheron’s,”’ 
and for building an almshouse there. It was to serve as an 
asylum for the sick and aged poor of the district, a lying-in 
hospital for destitute women, and a home for foundling chil- 
dren, and was to be known by the name of Tascheron’s Alms- 
house. Véronique directed that it was to be placed in the 
charge of the Franciscan Sisters, and fixed the salary of the 
head physician and house surgeon at four thousand frances. 
Mme. Graslin begged Roubaud to be the first head physician, 
and to superintend the execution of the sanitary arrangements 
and plans to be made by the architect, M. Gérard. She also 
endowed the commune of Montégnac with sufficient land to 
pay the taxes. A certain fund was put in the hands of the 
church to be used as determined in some exceptional cases ; 
for the church was to be the guardian of the young ; and ifany 
of the children in Montégnac should show a special aptitude 
for art or science or industrial pursuits, the far-sighted benevo- 
lence of the testatrix provided thus for their encouragement. 

The tidings of her death were received as the news of a 
calamity to the whole country, and no word that reflected on 
her memory went with it. 

Gérard, appointed Francis Graslin’s guardian, was required 
by the terms of the will to live at the chateau, and thither he 
went ; but not until three months after Véronique’s death did 
he marry Denise Tascheron, in whom Francis found, as it 
were, a second mother. 


ALBERT SAVARON 
(de Savarus). 
To Madame Emile Girardin. 


OnE of the few drawing-rooms where, under the Restora- 
tion, the archbishop of Besancon was sometimes to be seen, | 
was that of the Baronne de Watteville, to whom he was par- 
ticularly attached on account of her religious sentiments. 

A word as to this lady, the most important lady of Besan- 
gon. 

Monsieur de Watteville, a descendant of the famous Watte- 
ville, the most successful and illustrious of murderers and 
renegades—his extraordinary adventures are too much a part 
of history to be related here—this nineteenth-century Mon- 
sieur de Watteville was as gentle and peaceable as his ancestor 
of the Grand Sitcle had been passionate and turbulent. After 
living in the Com/é* like a wood-louse in the crack of a wainscot, 
he had married the heiress of the celebrated house of Rupt. 
Mademoiselle de Rupt brought twenty thousand francs a year 
in the funds to add to the ten thousand francs a year in real 
estate of the Baron de Watteville. The Swiss gentleman’s 
coat-of-arms (the Wattevilles are Swiss) was then borne as an 
‘escutcheon of pretense on the old shield of the Rupts. The 
marriage, arranged in 1802, was solemnized in 1815 after the 
second Restoration. Within three years of the birth of a 
daughter all Madame de Watteville’s grandparents were 
dead and their estates wound up. Monsieur de Watteville’s 
house was then sold, and they settled in the Rue de la Préfec- 
ture in the fine old mansion of the Rupts, with an immense 
garden stretching to the Rue du Perron. Madame de Watte- 


*La Franche Comté. 
(285) 


286 ALBERT SAVARON. 


ville, devout as a girl, became even more so after her marriage. 
She was one of the queens of the saintly brotherhood which 
gives the upper circles of Besangon a solemn air and prudish 
manners in harmony with the character of the town. 

Monsieur le Baron de Watteville, a dry, lean man, devoid 
of intelligence, looked worn out without any one knowing 
whereby, for he enjoyed the profoundest ignorance ; but as his 
wife was a red-haired woman, and of a stern nature that 
became proverbial (we still say ‘‘ as sharp as Madame de Watte- 
ville’’) some wits of the legal profession declared that he had 
been worn against that rock—/xfr is obviously derived from 
rupes. Scientific students of social phenomena will not fail to 
have observed that Rosalie was the only offspring of the union 
between the Wattevilles and the Rupts. 

Monsieur de Watteville spent his existence in a handsome 
workshop with a lathe; he was a turner! As subsidiary to this 
pursuit, he took up a fancy for making collections. Philo- 
sophical doctors, devoted to the study of madness, regard 
this tendency toward collecting as a first degree of mental 
aberration when it is set on small things. The Baron de 
Watteville treasured shells and geological fragments of the 
neighborhood of Besancon. Some contradictory folk, espe- 
cially women, would say of Monsieur de Watteville, ‘* He has 
a noble soul! He perceived from the first days of his married 
life that he would never be his wife’s master, so he threw 
himself into a mechanical occupation and good living.’’ 

The house of the Rupts was not devoid of a certain magnifi- 
cence worthy of Louis XIV., and bore traces of the nobility 
of the two families who had mingled in 1815. The chandeliers 
of glass cut in the shape of leaves, the brocades, the damask, 
the carpets, the gilt furniture, were all in harmony with the 
old liveries and the old servants. Though served in blackened 
family plate, round a looking-glass tray furnished with Dresden 
china, the food was exquisite. The wines selected by Mon- 
sieur de Watteville, who, to occupy his time and vary his 


ALBERT SAVARON. 287 


employments, was his own butler, enjoyed a sort of fame 
throughout the department. Madame de Watteville’s fortune 
was a fine one ; while her husband’s, which consisted only of 
the estate of Rouxey, worth about ten thousand francs a year, 
was not increased by inheritance. It is needless to add that in 
consequence of Madame de Watteville’s close intimacy with 
the archbishop, the three or four clever or remarkable abbés 
of the diocese who were not averse to good feeding were very 
much at home at her house. 

At a ceremonial dinner given in honor of I know not 
whose wedding, at the beginning of September, 1834, when 
the women were standing in a circle round the drawing-room 
fire, and the men in groups by the windows, every one 
exclaimed with pleasure at the entrance of Monsieur 1’Abbé 
de Grancey, who was announced. 

** Well, and the lawsuit ?’’ they all cried. 

**Won!”’ replied the vicar-general. ‘‘ The verdict of the 
court, from which we had no hope, you know why re 

This was an allusion to the members of the First Court of 
Appeal of 1830; the Legitimists had almost all withdrawn. 

«« The verdict is in our favor on every point, and reverses 
the decision of the lower coutt.”’ 

** Everybody thought you were done for.’’ 

«¢ And we should have been, but for me. I told our advo- 
cate to be off to Paris, and at the crucial moment I was able 
to secure a new pleader, to whom we owe our victory, a 
-wonderful man “3 

‘¢ At Besancon?’’ said Monsieur de Watteville, guilelessly. 

«¢ At Besancon,”’ replied the Abbé de Grancey. 

‘‘Oh yes, Savaron,’’ said a handsome young man sitting 
near the Baroness, and named de Soulas. 

‘‘ He spent five or six nights over it; he devoured docu- 
ments and briefs; he had seven or eight interviews of several 
hours with me,’’ continued Monsieur de Grancey, who had 
just reappeared at the Hétel de Rupt for the first time in 








288 ALBERT SAVARON. 


three weeks. ‘‘In short, Monsieur Savaron has just com- 
pletely beaten the celebrated lawyer whom our adversaries 
had sént for from Paris. This young man is wonderful, the 
bigwigs say. Thus the chapter is twice victorious; it has 
triumphed in law and also in politics, since it has vanquished. 
Liberalism in the person of the counsel of our municipality. 
‘Our adversaries,’ so our advocate said, ‘must not expect to 
find readiness on all sides to ruin the archbishoprics.’ The 
president was obliged to enforce silence. All the townsfolk of 
Besangon applauded. Thus the possession of the buildings of 
the old convent remains with the Chapter of the Cathedral of 
Besancon. Monsieur Savaron, however, invited his Parisian 
opponent to dine with him as they came out of court. He 
accepted, saying, ‘Honor to every conqueror,’ and com- 
plimented him on his success without bitterness.’’ 

«* And where.did you unearth this lawyer ?’’ said Madame 
de Watteville. ‘I never heard his name before.”’ 

‘‘ Why, you can see his windows from here,’’ replied the 
vicar-general. ‘‘ Monsieur Savaron lives in the Rue du Per- 
ron; the garden of his house joins on to yours.’’ 

‘¢ But he is not a native of the county,’’ said Monsieur de 
Watteville. 

‘*So little is he a native of any place, that no one knows 
where he comes from,’’ said Madame de Chavoncourt. 

‘‘But who is he?’’ asked Madame de Watteville, taking 
the abbé’s arm to go into the dining-room. ‘‘If he is a stran- 
ger, by what chance has he settled at Besancon? It isa strange . 
fancy for a barrister.’’ 

‘* Very strange!’’ echoed Amédée de Soulas, whose biog- 
raphy is here necessary to the understanding of this tale. 


In all ages France and England have carried on an ex- 
change of trifles, which is all the more constant because it 
evades the tyranny of the custom-house. The fashion that is 
called English in Paris is called French in London, and this 


ALBERT SAVARON. 289 


is reciprocal. The hostility of the two nations is suspended 
on two points—the uses of words and the fashion of dress. 
**God save the King,’’ the national air of England, is a tune 
written by Lulli for the chorus of ‘‘ Esther’’ or of ‘‘Athalie.’’ 
Hoops, introduced at Paris by an Englishwoman, were in- 
vented in London, it is known why, by a Frenchwoman, the 
notorious Duchess of Portsmouth. They were at first so 
jeered at that the first Englishwoman who appeared in them 
at the Tuileries narrowly escaped being crushed by the crowd; 
but they were adopted. This fashion tyrannized over the 
ladies of Europe for half a century. At the peace of 1815, 
for a year, the long waists of the English were a standing jest; 
all Paris went to see Pothier and Brunet in ‘The Funny 
Englishwomen ;’’ but in 1816 and 1817 the belt of the 
Frenchwoman, which in 1814 cut her across the bosom, 
gradually descended till it reached the hips. 

Within ten years England has made two little gifts to our 
language. The Jnucroyable, the Merveilleux, the Elégant, the 
three successors of the pefit-mattre of discreditable etymology, 
have made way for the ‘‘dandy’’ and the ‘“lion.”” The 
Zion is not the parent of the Zonne. The dionne is due to the 
famous song by Alfred de Musset— 


“ Have you seen in Barcelona 


She that is my mistress and my lionne.” 


There has been a fusion—or, if you prefer it, a confusion— 
of the two words and the leading ideas. When an absurdity 
can amuse Paris, which devours as many masterpieces as ab- 
surdities, the provinces can hardly be deprived of them. So, 
as soon as the Zon paraded Paris with his mane, his beard 
and mustaches, his waistcoats and his eyeglass, maintained in 
its place, without the help of his hands, by the contraction . 
of his cheek and eye-socket, the chief towns of some depart- 
ments had their sub-lions, who protested by the smartness of 

19 


290 ALBERT SAVARON. 


their trousers-straps against the untidiness of their fellow- 
townsmen. 

Thus, in 1834, Besangon could boast of a Zon, in the per- 
son of Monsieur Amédée-Sylvain de Soulas, spelt Souleyas at 
the time of the Spanish occupation. Amédée de Soulas is, 
perhaps, the only man in Besangon descended from a Spanish 
family. Spain sent men to manage her business in the Comté, 
but very few Spaniards settled there. The Soulas remained 
in consequence of their connection with Cardinal Gran- 
velle. 

Young Monsieur de Soulas was always talking of leaving Be- 
sangon, a dull town, church-going, and not literary, a military 
centre and garrison town, of which the manners and customs 
and physiognomy are worth describing. This opinion allowed 
of his lodging, like a man uncertain of the future, in three 
very scantily furnished rooms at the end of the Rue Neuve, 
just where it opens into the Rue de la Préfecture. 

Young Monsieur de Soulas could not possibly live without 
a tiger. This tiger was the son of one of his farmers, a small 
servant aged fourteen, thick-set, and named Babylas. The 
lion dressed his tiger very smartly—a short tunic coat of iron- 
gray cloth, belted with patent leather, bright blue plush 
breeches, a red waistcoat, polished leather top-boots, a shiny 
hat with black lacing, and brass buttons with the arms of 
Soulas. Amédée gave this boy white cotton gloves and his 
washing, and thirty-six francs a month to keep himself—a 
sum that seemed enormous to the grisettes of Besangon: four 
hundred and twenty francs a year to a child of fifteen, with- 
out counting extras! The extras consisted in the price for 
which he could sell his turned clothes, a present when Soulas 
exchanged one of his horses, and the perquisite of the manure. 
The two horses, treated with sordid economy, cost, one with 
another, eight hundred a year. His bills for articles received 
from Paris, such as perfumery, cravats, jewelry, patent black- 
ing, and clothes, ran to another twelve hundred francs. Add 


a 


ALBERT SAVARON. 291 


to this the groom, or tiger, the horses, a very superior style 
of dress, and six hundred francs a year for rent, and you will 
see a grand total of three thousand francs. 

Now, Monsieur de Soulas’ father had left him only four 
thousand francs a year, the income from some cottage farms 
in rather bad repair, which required keeping up, a charge 
which lent painful uncertainty to the rents. The lion had 
hardly three francs a day left for food, amusements, and 
gambling. He very often dined out, and breakfasted with 
remarkable frugality. When he was positively obliged to 
dine at his own cost, he sent his tiger to bring a couple of 
dishes from a cook-shop, never spending more than twenty- 
five sous. 

Young Monsieur de Soulas was supposed to be a spendthrift, 
recklessly extravagant, whereas the poor man made the two 
ends meet in the year with a keenness and skill which would 
have done honor to a thrifty housewife. At Besancon in 
those days no one knew how great a tax on a man’s capital 
were six francs spent in polish to spread on his boots or 
shoes, yellow gloves at fifty sous a pair, cleaned in the deepest 
secrecy to make them three times renewed, cravats costing ten 
francs, and lasting three months, four waistcoats at twenty- 
five francs, and trousers fitting close to the boots. How could 
he do otherwise, since we see women in Paris bestowing their 
special attention on simpletons who visit them, and cut out 
the most remarkable men by means of these frivolous advan- 
tages, which a man can buy for fifteen louis, and get his hair 
curled and a fine linen shirt into the bargain? 

If this unhappy youth should seem to you to have become 
a dion on very cheap terms, you must know that Amédée de 
Soulas had been three times to Switzerland, by coach and in 
short stages, twice to Paris, and once from Paris to England. 
He passed as a well-informed traveler, and could say, ‘‘In 
England, where I went ” The dowagers of the town 
would say to him, ‘‘ You, who have been in England——”’ 





292 ALBERT SAVARON,. 


He had been as far as Lombardy, and seen the shores of the 
Italian lakes. He read new books. Finally, when he was 
cleaning his gloves, the tiger Babylas replied to callers, 
‘Monsieur is very busy.’’ An attempt had been made to 
withdraw Monsieur Amédée de Soulas from circulation by 
pronouncing him ‘‘ A man of advanced ideas.’’ Amédée had 
the gift of uttering with the gravity of a native the common- 
places that were in fashion, which gave him the credit of be- 
ing one of the most enlightened of the nobility. His person 
was garnished with fashionable trinkets, and his head furnished 
with ideas hall-marked by the press. 

In 1834 Amédée was a young man of five-and-twenty, of 
medium height, dark, with a very prominent thorax, well- 
made shoulders, rather plump legs, feet already fat, white 
dimpled hands, a beard under his chin, mustaches worthy of 
the garrison, a good-natured, fat, rubicund face, a flat nose, 
and brown expressionless eyes; nothing Spanish about him. 
He was progressing rapidly in the direction of obesity, which 
would be fatal to his pretensions, His nails were well kept, 
his beard trimmed, the smallest details of his dress attended to 
with English precision. Hence Amédée de Soulas was looked 
upon as the finest man in Besangon. A hairdresser who waited 
upon him at a fixed hour—another luxury, costing sixty francs 
a year—held him up as the sovereign authority in matters of 
fashion and elegance. 

Amédée slept late, dressed and went out towards noon, to 
go to one of his farms and practice pistol-shooting. He 
attached as much importance to this exercise as Lord Byron 
did in his later days. Then at three o’clock he came home, 
admired on horseback by the grisettes and the ladies who 
happened to be at their windows. After an affectation of 
study or business, which seemed to engage him till four, he 
dressed to dine out, spent the evening in the drawing-rooms 
of the aristocracy of Besancon playing whist, and went home 
to bed at eleven. No life could be more above-board, more 


ALBERT SAVARON. 293 


prudent, or more irreproachable, for he punctually attended 
the services at church on Sundays and holy days. 

To enable you to understand how exceptional is such a life, 
it is necessary to devote a few words to an account of Besancon. 
No town ever offered more deaf and dumb resistance to pro- 
gress. At Besancon the officials, the employes, the military, 
in short, every one engaged in governing it, sent thither from 
Paris to fill a post of any kind, are all spoken of by the 
expressive general name of ‘‘ The Colony.’’ The colony is 
neutral ground, the only ground where, as in church, the 
upper rank and the townsfolk of the place can meet. Here, 
fired by a word, a look, or gesture, are started those feuds 
between house and house, between a woman of rank and a 
citizen’s wife, which endure till death, and widen the impass- 
able gulf which parts the two classes of society. With the 
exception of the Clermont-Mont-Saint-Jean, the Beauffremont, 
the de Scey, and the Gramont families, with a few others who 
come only to stay on their estates in the Comté, the aristoc- 
racy of Besancon dates no further back than a couple of 
centuries, the time of the conquest by Louis XIV. This 
little world is essentially of the ar/ement, and arrogant, stiff, 
solemn, uncompromising, haughty beyond all comparison, 
even with the Court of Vienna, for in this the nobility of 
Besancon would put the Viennese drawing-rooms to shame. 
As to Victor Hugo, Nodier, Fourier, the glories of the town, 
they are never mentioned, no one thinks about them. The 
marriages in these families are arranged in the cradle, so 
rigidly are the greatest things settled as well as the smallest. 
No stranger, no intruder, ever finds his way into one of these 
houses, and to obtain an introduction for the colonels or 
officers of title belonging to the first families in France when 
quartered there requires efforts of diplomacy which Prince 
Talleyrand would gladly have mastered to use at a congress. 

In 1834 Amédée was the only man in Besangon who wore 
trousers-straps; this will account for the young man’s being 


294 ALBERT SAVARON. 


regarded asa lion. And a little anecdote will enable you to 
understand the city of Besangon. ' 

Some time before the opening of this story, the need arose 
at the préfecture for bringing an editor from Paris for the 
official newspaper, to enable it to hold its own against the 
little Gazette, dropped at Besangon by the great Gazette, and 
the Patriot, which frisked in the hands of the Republicans. 
Paris sent them a young man, knowing nothing about la 
-Franche Comté, who began by writing them a leading article 
of the school of the Charivarit. The chief of the moderate 
party, a member of the municipal council, sent for the jour- 
nalist and said to him, ‘‘ You must understand, monsieur, that 
we are serious, more than serious—tiresome ; we resent being 
amused, and are furious at having been made to laugh. Be as 
hard of digestion as the toughest disquisitions in the Revue 
des Deux Mondes, and you will hardly reach the level of 
Besangon.”’ 

The editor took the hint, and thenceforth spoke the most 
incomprehensible philosophical lingo. His success was com- 
plete. 

If young Monsieur de Soulas did not fall in the esteem of 
Besangon society, it was out of pure vanity on its part; the 
aristocracy were happy to affect a modern air, and to be able 
to show any Parisians of rank who visited the Comté a young 
man who bore some likeness to them. 

All this hidden labor, all this dust thrown in people’s eyes, 
this display of folly and latent prudence, had an object, or the 
Zion of Besancon would have been no son of the soil. Amédée 
wanted to achieve a good marriage by proving some day that 
his farms were not mortgaged, and that he had some savings. 
He wanted to be the talk of the town, to be the finest and 
best-dressed man there, in order to win first the attention, 
and then the hand, of Mademoiselle Rosalie de Watteville. 

In 1830, at the time when young Monsieur de Soulas was 
setting up in business as a dandy, Rosalie was but fourteen. 


ALBERT SAVARON. 295 


Hence, in 1834, Mademoiselle de Watteville had reached the 
age when young persons are easily struck by the peculiarities 
which attracted the attention of the town to Amédée. There 
are many 4ons who become “ous out of self-interest and specu- 
lation. The Wattevilles, who for twelve years had been draw- 
ing an income of fifty thousand francs, did not spend more 
than four-and-twenty thousand francs a year, while receiving 
all the upper circle of Besangon every Monday and Friday. 
On Monday they gave a dinner, on Friday an evening party. 
Thus, in twelve years, what a sum must have accumulated 
from twenty-six thousand francs a year, saved and invested 
with the judgment that distinguishes those old families! It 
was very generally supposed that Madame de Watteville, 
thinking she had land enough, had placed her savings in the 
three per cents., in 1830. Rosalie’s dowry would therefore, 
as the best informed opined, amount to about twenty thousand 
francs a year. So for the last five years Amédée had worked 
like a mole to get into the highest favor of the severe Baroness, 
while laying himself out to flatter Mademoiselle de Watteville’s 
conceit. : 

Madame de Watteville was in the secret of the devices by 
which Amédée succeeded in keeping up his rank in Besangon, 
and esteemed him highly for it. Soulas had placed himself 
under her wing when she was thirty, and at that time had 
dared to admire her and make her his idol ; he had got so far 
as to be allowed—he alone in the world—to pour out to her 
all the unseemly gossip which almost all very precise women 
love to hear, being authorized by their superior virtue to look 
into the gulf without falling, and into the devil’s snares with- 
out being caught. Do you understand why the lion did not 
allow himself the very smallest intrigue? He lived a public life, 
in the street so to speak, on purpose to play the part of a lover 
sacrificed to duty by the Baroness, and to feast her mind with 
the sins she had forbidden to her senses. A man who is so 
privileged as to be allowed to pour light stories into the ear of 


296 ALBERT SAVARON. 


a bigot is in her eyes a charming man. If this exemplary 
youth had better known the human heart, he might without 
risk have allowed himself some flirtations among the grisettes 
of Besangon who looked up to him asa king; his affairs might 
perhaps have been all the more hopeful with the strict and 
prudish Baroness. ‘To Rosalie our Cato affected prodigality ; 
he professed a life of elegance, showing her in perspective the 
splendid part played by a woman of fashion in Paris, whither 
he meant to go as Deputé. 

All these manceuvres were crowned with complete success. 
In 1834 the mothers of the forty noble families composing the 
high society of Besangon quoted Monsieur Amédée de Soulas 
as the most charming young man in the town; no one would 
have dared to dispute his place as cock of the walk at the 
H6tel de Rupt, and all Besangon regarded him as Rosalie de 
Watteville’s future husband. There had even been some ex- 
change of ideas on the subject between the Baronessand Amédée, 
to which the Baron’s apparent nonentity gave some certainty. 

Mademoiselle de Watteville, to whom her enormous pros- 
pective fortune at that time lent considerable importance, had 
been brought up exclusively within the precincts of the Hétel 
de Rupt—which her mother rarely quitted, so devoted was she 
to her dear archbishop—and severely repressed by an exclu- 
sively religious education, and by her mother’s despotism, 
which held her rigidly to principles. Rosalie knew abso- 
lutely nothing. It is knowledge to have learned geography 
from Guthrie, sacred history, ancient history, the history of 
France, and the four rules, all passed through the sieve of an 
old Jesuit? Dancing and music were forbidden, as being 
more likely to corrupt life than to grace it. The Baroness 
taught her daughter every conceivable stitch in tapestry and 
women’s work—plain sewing, embroidery, knitting. At 
seventeen Rosalie had never read anything but the “ Lettres 
édifiantes,’’ and some works on heraldry. No newspaper had 
ever defiled her sight. She attended mass at the Cathedral 


ALBERT SAVARON. 297 


every morning, taken there by her mother, came back to 
breakfast, did needlework after a little walk in the garden, 
and received visitors, sitting with the Baroness until dinner- 
time. Then, after dinner, excepting on Mondays and Fri- 
days, she accompanied Madame de Watteville to other houses 
to spend the evening, without being allowed to talk more 
than the maternal rule permitted. 

At eighteen Mademoiselle de Watteville was a slight, thin 
girl with a flat figure, fair, colorless, and insignificant to the 
last degree. Her eyes, of a very light blue, borrowed beauty 
from their lashes, which, when downcast, threw a shadow on 
her cheeks. A few freckles marred the whiteness of her fore- 
head, which was shapely enough. Her face was exactly like 
those of Albert Diirer’s saints, or those of the painters before 
Perugino; the same plump, though slender modeling, the 
same delicacy saddened by ecstasy, the same severe guileless- 
ness. Everything about her, even to her attitude, was sugges- 
tive of those virgins, whose beauty is only revealed in its 
mystical radiance to the eyes of the studious connoisseur. 
She had fine hands though red, and a pretty foot, the foot of 
an aristocrat. 

She habitually wore simple checked cotton dresses ; but on 
Sundays and in the evenings her mother allowed her silk. 
The cut of her frocks, made at Besancon, also made her ugly, 
while her mother tried to borrow grace, beauty, and elegance 
from Paris fashions ; for through Monsieur de Soulas she pro- 
cured the smallest trifles of her dress from there. Rosalie 
had never worn a pair of silk stockings or thin boots, but 
always cotton stockings and leather shoes. On high days she 
was dressed in a muslin frock, her hair plainly dressed, and 
had bronze kid shoes. | 

This education, and her own modest demeanor, hid in 
Rosalie a spirit of iron. Physiologists and profound observers 
will tell you, perhaps to your great astonishment, that tem- 
pers, characteristics, wit, or genius reappear in families at long 


298 ALBERT SAVARON. 


intervals, precisely like what are known as hereditary diseases. 
Thus talent, like the gout, sometimes skips over two genera- 
tions. We have an illustrious example of this phenomenon 
in George Sand, in whom are resuscitated the force, the 
power, and the imaginative faculty of the Maréchal de Saxe, 
whose natural granddaughter she is. 

The decisive character and romantic daring of the famous 
Watteville had reappeared in the soul of his grand-niece, 
reinforced by the tenacity and pride of blood of the Rupts. 
But these qualities—or faults, if you will have it so—were as 
deeply buried in this young girlish soul, apparently so weak 
and yielding, as the seething lavas within a hill before it be- 
comes a volcano. Madame de Watteville alone, perhaps, sus- 
pected this inheritance from two strains. She was so severe 
to her Rosalie that she replied one day to the archbishop, 
who blamed her for being too hard on the child, ‘* Leave me 
to manage her, monseigneur. I know her! She has more 
than one Beelzebub in her skin!’ 

The Baroness kept all the keener watch over her daughter, 
because she considered her honor as a mother to be at stake. 
After all, she had nothing else to do. Clotilde de Rupt, at 
this time five-and-thirty, and as good as widowed, with a 
husband who turned egg-cups in every variety of wood, who 
set his mind on making wheels with six spokes out of iron- 
wood, and manufactured snuff-boxes for every one of his 
acquaintance, flirted in strict propriety with Amédée de Soulas. 
When this young man was in the house, she alternately dis- 
missed and recalled her daughter, and tried to detect 
symptoms of jealousy in that youthful soul, so as to have 
occasion to repress them. She imitated the police in its deal- 
ings with the Republicans; but she labored in vain. Rosalie 
showed no symptoms of rebellion. Then the arid bigot 
accused her daughter of perfect insensibility. Rosalie knew 
her mother well enough to be sure that if she had thought 
young Monsieur de Soulas mice, she would have drawn down 


ALBERT SAVARON. 299 


on herself a smart reproof. Thus, to all her mother’s incite- 
ment she replied merely by such phrases as are wrongly called 
Jesuitical—wrongly, because the Jesuits were strong, and such 
reservations are the spiked wall behind which weakness 
takes refuge. Then the mother regarded the girl as a dissem- 
bler. If by mischance a spark of the true nature of the Watte- 
villes and the Rupts blazed out, the mother armed herself with 
the respect due from children to their parents to reduce Rosalie 
to passive obedience. 

This covert battle was carried on in the most secret seclusion 
of domestic life, with closed doors. The vicar-general, the 
dear Abbé Grancey, the friend of the late archbishop, clever 
as he was in his capacity of the chief Father Confessor of the 
diocese, could not discover whether the struggle had stirred 
up some hatred between the mother and daughter, whether 
the mother was jealous in anticipation, or whether -the court 
Amédée was paying to the girl through her mother had not 
overstepped its due limits. Being a friend of the family, 
neither mother nor daughter confessed to him. Rosalie, a 
little too much harried, morally, about young de Soulas, could 
not abide him, to use a homely phrase, and when he spoke to 
her, trying to take her heart by surprise, she received him but 
coldly. This aversion, discerned only by her mother’s eye, 
was a constant subject of admonition.° 

-** Rosalie, I cannot imagine why you affect such coldness 
towards Amédée. Is it because he is a friend of the family, 
and because we like him—your father and I?”’ 

«¢ Well, mamma,’’ replied the poor child one day, ‘if I 
made him welcome, should I not be still more in the wrong ?”’ 

‘¢What do you mean by that ?’’ cried Madame de Watte- 
ville. ‘‘ What is the meaning of such words? Your mother 
is unjust, no doubt, and, according to you, would be so in any 
case! Never let such an answer pass your lips again to your 
mother ”” and so forth. 

This quarrel lasted three hours and three-quarters. Rosalie 





300 ALBERT SAVARON,. 


noted the time. Her mother, pale with fury, sent her to her 
room, where Rosalie pondered on the meaning of this scene 
without discovering it, so guileless was she. Thus young 
Monsieur de Soulas, who was supposed by every one to be very 
near the end he was aiming at, all neckcloths set, and by dint 
of pots of patent blacking—an end which required so much 
waxing of his mustaches, so many smart waistcoats, wore out 
so many horseshoes and stays—for he wore a leather vest, the 
stays of the “on—Amédée, I say, was farther away than any 
chance comer, although he had on his side the worthy and noble 
Abbé de Grancey. 


‘* Madame,’’ said Monsieur de Soulas, addressing the Baron- 
ess, while waiting till his soup was cool enough to swallow, 
and affecting to give a romantic turn to his narrative, ‘‘ one 
fine morning the mail-coach dropped at the Hétel National a 
gentleman from Paris, who, after seeking apartments, made up 
his mind in favor of the first floor in Mademoiselle Galard’s 
house, Rue du Perron. Then the stranger went straight to 
the Mairie, and had himself,registered as a resident with all 
political qualifications. peal he had his name entered on 
the list of barristers to the court, showing his title in due 
form, and he left his card on all his new colleagues, the 
ministerial officials, the councilors of the court and the mem- 
bers of the bench, with the name, ‘ ALBERT SAVARON.’ ”” 

‘<The name of Savaron is famous,’’ said Mademoiselle de 
Watteville, who was strong in heraldic information. ‘* The 
Savarons of Savarus are one of the oldest, noblest, and richest 
families in Belgium.’’ 

‘* He is a Frenchman, and no man’s son,’’ replied Amédée 
de Soulas. ‘‘If he wishes to bear the arms of the Savarons 
of Savarus, he must add a bar-sinister. There is no one left 
of the Brabant family but a Mademoiselle de Savarus, a rich 
heiress, and unmarried.’’ 

‘‘The bar-sinister is, of course, the badge of a bastard ; 


ALBERT SAVARON. 301 


but the bastard of a Comte de Savarus is noble,’’ answered 
Rosalie. 

** Enough, that will do, mademoiselle !’’ said the Baroness. 

** You insisted on her learning heraldry,’’ said Monsieur de 
Watteville, ‘‘and she knows it very well.”’ 

**Go on, I beg, Monsieur de Soulas.’’ 

**You may suppose that in a town where everything is 
classified, known, pigeon-holed, ticketed, and numbered, as 
in Besangon, Albert Savaron was received without hesitation 
by the lawyers of the town. They were satisfied to say, 
‘Here is a man who does not know his Besancon. Who the 
devil can have sent him here? What can he hope to do? 
Sending his card to the judges instead of calling in person! 
What a blunder!’ And so, three days after, Savaron had 
ceased toexist. He took as his servant old Monsieur Galard’s 
man—Galard being dead—Jéréme, who can cook a little. 
Albert Savaron was all the more completely forgotten, because 
no one had seen him or met him anywhere.”’ 

*« Then, does he not go to mass?’’ asked Madame de Cha- 
voncourt. 

“‘He goes on Sundays to Saint-Pierre, but to the early 
service, at eight in the morning. He risesevery night between 
one and two in the morning, works till eight, has his break- 
fast, and then goes on working. He walks in his garden, 
going round fifty or perhaps sixty times; then he goes in, 
dines, and goes to bed between six and seven.”’ 

‘¢ How did you learn all that?’’ Madame de Chavoncourt 
asked Monsieur Soulas. 

“In the first place, madame, I live in the Rue Neuve, at 
the corner of the Rue du Perron; I look out on the house 
where this mysterious personage lodges ; then, of course, there 
are communications between my tiger and Jér6éme.”’ 

‘And you gossip with Babylas!’’ exclaimed Madame de 
Chavoncourt. 

«¢ What would you have me do out riding?”’ 


302 ALBERT SAVARON. 


‘‘Well—and how was it that you engaged a stranger for. 
your defense ?’’ asked the Baroness, thus placing the conversa- 
tion in the hands of the vicar-general. 

‘« The president of the court played this pleader a trick by 
appointing him to defend at the assizes a half-witted peasant 
accused of forgery. But Monsieur Savaron procured the poor 
man’s acquittal by proving his innocence and showing that 
he had been a tool in the hands of the real culprits. Not 
only did his line of defense succeed, but it led to the arrest 
of two of the witnesses, who were proved guilty and con- 
demned. His speech struck the court and the jury. One of 
these, a merchant, placed a difficult case next day in the 
hands of Monsieur Savaron, and he won it. In the position 
in which we found ourselves, Monsieur Berryer finding it im- 
possible to come to Besangon, Monsieur de Garcenault ad- 
vised him to employ this Monsieur Albert Savaron, foretelling 
our success. As soon as I saw him and heard him, I felt faith 
in him, and I was not wrong.’’ 

“Is he then so extraordinary ?’’ asked Madame de Cha- 
voncourt. 

‘* Certainly, madame,’’ replied the vicar-general. 

** Well, tell us about it,’’ said Madame de Watteville. 

‘The first time I saw him,” said the Abbé de Grancey, 
he received me in his outer room next the ante-room—old 
Galard’s drawing-room—which he has had painted like old 
oak, and which I found to be entirely lined with law-books, 
arranged on shelves also painted as old oak. The painting 
and the books are the sole decoration of the room, for the 
furniture consists of an old writing-table of carved wood, six 
old armchairs covered with tapestry, window curtains of gray 
stuff bordered with green, and a green carpet over the floor. 
The ante-room stove heats this library as well. As I waited 
there I did not picture my advocate as a young man. But 
this singular setting is in perfect harmony with his person ; 
for Monsieur Savaron came out in a black merino dressing- 


ALBERT SAVARON. 303 


gown tied with a red cord, red slippers, a red flannel waist- 
coat, and a red smoking-cap.’’ 

**The devil’s colors!’’ exclaimed Madame de Watteville. 

“*Yes,’’ said the abbé; ‘‘but a magnificent head. Black 
hair already streaked with a little gray, hair like that of Saint 
Peter and Saint Paul in pictures, with thick shining curls, 
hair as stiff as horsehair ; a round white throat like a woman’s; 
a splendid forehead, furrowed by the strong median line which 
great schemes, great thoughts, deep meditations stamp on a 
great man’s brow; an olive complexion marbled with red, a 
square nose, eyes of flame, hollow cheeks, with two long lines 
betraying much suffering, a mouth with a sardonic smile, and a 
small chin, narrow, and too short ; crows’ feet on his temples; 
deep-set eyes, moving in their sockets like burning balls; but, 
in spite of all these indications of a violently passionate nature, 
his manner was calm, deeply resigned, and his voice of pene- 
trating sweetness, which surprised me in court by its easy 
flow ; a true orator’s voice, now clear and appealing, some- 
times insinuating, but a voice of thunder when needful, and 
lending itself to sarcasm to become incisive. 

“‘Monsieur Albert Savaron is of middle height, neither 
stout nor thin. And his hands are those of a prelate. 

“The second time I called on him he received me in his 
bedroom, adjoining the library, and smiled at my astonish- 
ment when I saw there a wretched chest of drawers, a shabby 
carpet, a camp-bed, and cotton window-curtains. He came 
out of his private room, to which no one is admitted, as 
Jéréme informed me; the man did not go in, but merely 
knocked at the door. 

‘‘ The third time he was breakfasting in his library on the 
most frugal fare; but on this occasion, as he had spent the 
night studying our documents, as I had my attorney with me, 
and as that worthy Monsieur Girardet is long-winded, I had 
leisure to study the stranger. He certainly is no ordinary 
man. There is more than one secret behind that face, at 


304 ALBERT SAVARON. 


once so terrible and so gentle, patient and yet impatient, 
broad and yet hollow. I saw, too, that he stooped a little, 
like all men who have some heavy burden to bear.”’ 

‘¢ Why did so eloquent a man leave Paris? For what pur- 
pose did he come to Besangon?’’ asked pretty Madame de 
Chavoncourt. ‘* Could no one tell him how little chance a 
stranger has of succeeding here? ‘The good folks of Besancon 
will make use of him, but they will not allow him to make 
use of them. Why, having come, did he make so little 
effort that it needed a freak of the president’s to bring him 
forward ?”’ 

‘¢ After carefully studying that fine head,’’ said the abbé, 
looking keenly at the lady who had interrupted him, in such 
a way as to suggest that there was something he would not 
tell, ‘‘ and especially after hearing him this morning reply to 
one of the bigwigs of the Paris bar, I believe that this man, 
who may be five-and-thirty, will by-and-by make a great 
sensation.”’ 

‘¢Why should we discuss him? You have gained your 
action, and paid him,’’ said Madame de Watteville, watching 
her daughter, who, all the time the vicar-general had been 
speaking, seemed to hang on his lips. 

The conversation changed, and no more was heard of 
Albert Savaron. ' 

The portrait sketched by the cleverest of the vicars-general 
of the diocese had all the greater charm for Rosalie because 
there was a romance behind it. For the first time in her life 
she had come across the marvelous, the exceptional, which 
smiles on every youthful imagination, and which curiosity, so 
eager at Rosalie’s age, goes forth to meet half-way. What an 
ideal being was this Albert—gloomy, unhappy, eloquent, 
laborious, as compared by Mademoiselle de Watteville to that 
chubby fat Count, bursting with health, paying compliments, 
and talking of the fashions in the very face of the splendor ’ 
of the old Counts of Rupt. Amédée had cost her many 


ALBERT SAVARON. 305 


quarrels and scoldings, and, indeed, she knew him only too 
well; while this Albert Savaron offered many enigmas to be 
solved, 

**Albert Savaron de Savarus,’’ she repeated to herself. 

Now, to see him, to catch sight of him! This was the 
desire of the girl to whom desire was hitherto unknown. She 
* pondered in her heart, in her fancy, in her brain, the least 
- phrases used by the Abbé de Grancey, for all his words had 
told. 

“*A fine forehead?’’ said she to herself, looking at the 
head of every man seated at the table; ‘“‘I do not see one 
fine one. Monsieur de Soulas’ is too prominent ; Monsieur 
de Grancey’s is fine, but he is seventy, and has no hair, it is 
impossible to see where his forehead ends.”’ 

** What is the matter, Rosalie; you are eating nothing ?’’ 

**] am not hungry, mamma,’’ said she. ‘A prelate’s 
hands ”? she went on to herself. ‘‘I cannot remember 
our handsome archbishop’s hands, though he confirmed me.”’ 

Finally, in the midst of her coming and going in the laby- 
rinth of her meditations, she remembered a lighted window 
she had seen from her bed, gleaming through the trees of the 
two adjoining gardens, when she had happened to wake in the 
night ‘*Then that was his light!’’ thought she. “I 
might see him! I will see him.”’ 

‘*Monsieur de Grancey, is the chapter’s lawsuit quite 
settled ?’’ asked Rosalie point-blank of the vicar-general, dur- 
ing a moment of silence. 

Madame de Watteville exchanged rapid glances with the 
vicar-general, 

«< What can that matter to you, my dear child?”’ she said 
- to Rosalie, with an affected sweetness which made her daughter 
cautious for the rest of her days. 

“Tt might be carried to the Court of Appeal, but our 
adversaries will think twice about that,’’ replied the abbé. 

«©T never could have believed that Rosalie would think 

20 








306 ALBERT SAVARON. 


about a lawsuit all through a dinner,’’ remarked Madame de 
Watteville. 

‘*Nor I either,’’ said Rosalie, in a dreamy way that made 
every one laugh. ‘‘ But Monsieur de Grancey was so full of 
it that I was interested.”’ 

The company rose from table and returned to the drawing- 
room. All through the evening Rosalie listened in case 
Albert Savaron should be mentioned again; but beyond the 
congratutations offered by each newcomer to the abbé on 
having gained his suit, to which no one added any praise of 
the advocate, no more was said about it. Mademoiselle de 
Watteville impatiently looked forward to bedtime. She had 
promised herself to wake at between two and three in the 
morning, and to look at Albert’s dressing-room windows. 
When the hour came, she felt much pleasure in gazing at the 
glimmer from the lawyer’s candles that shone through the 
trees, now almost bare of their leaves. By the help of the 
strong sight of a young girl, which curiosity seems to make 
longer, she saw Albert writing, and fancied she could distin- 
guish the color of the furniture, which she thought was red. 
From the chimney above the roof rose a thick column of 
smoke. 

‘While all the world is sleeping, he is awake—like God !”’ 
thought she. 

The education of girls brings with it such serious problems 
—for the future of a nation is in the mother—that the Uni- 
versity of France long since set itself the task of having noth- 
ing to do with it. Here is one of these problems: Ought 
girls to be informed on all points? Ought their minds to be 
under restraint? It need not be'said that the religious system 
is one of restraint. If you enlighten them, you make them 
demons before their time ; if you keep them from thinking, 
you end in the sudden explosion so well shown by Moliére in 
the character of Agnés, and you leave this suppressed mind, so 
fresh and clear-seeing, as swift and as logical as that of a sav- 


ALBERT SAVARON. 307 


age, at the mercy of an accident. This inevitable crisis was 
brought on in Mademoiselle de Watteville by the portrait 
which one of the most prudent abbés of the Chapter of 
Besancon imprudently allowed himself to sketch at a dinner 
party. 

Next morning, Mademoiselle de Watteville, while dressing, 
necessarily looked out at Albert Savaron walking in the garden 
adjoining that of the Hétel de Rupt. 

«What would have become of me,”’ thought she, “if he 
had lived anywhere else? Here I can, at any rate, see him. 
What is he thinking about ?’’ 

Having seen this extraordinary man, though at a distance, 
the only man whose countenance stood forth in contrast with 
crowds of Besangon faces she had hitherto met with, Rosalie 
at once jumped at the idea of getting into-his home, of ascer- 
taining the reasons of so much mystery, of hearing that elo- 
quent voice, of winning a glance from those fine eyes. All 
this she set her heart on, but how could she achieve it? 

All that day she drew her needle through her embroidery 
with the obtuse concentration of a girl who, like Agnés, seems 
to be thinking of nothing, but who is reflecting on things in 
- general so deeply that her artifice is unfailing. As a result of 
this profound meditation, Rosalie thought she would go to 
confession. Next morning, after mass, she had a brief inter- 
view with the Abbé Giroud at Saint-Pierre, and managed 
so ingeniously that the hour for her confession was fixed for 
Sunday morning at half-past seven, before eight o’clock mass. 
She committed herself to a dozen fibs in order to find herself, 
just for once, in the church at the hour when the lawyer came 
to mass. Then she was seized with an impulse of extreme 
affection for her father ; she went to see him in his workroom, 
and asked him for all sorts of information on the art of turn- 
ing, ending by advising him to turn larger pieces, columns. 
After persuading her father to set to work on some twisted 
pillars, one of the difficulties of the turner’s art, she suggested 


308 ALBERT SAVARON. 


that he should make use of a large heap of stones that lay in the 
middle of the garden to construct a sort of grotto on which he 
might erect a little temple or Belvedere in which his twisted 
pillars could be used and shown off to all the world. 

At the climax of the pleasure the poor unoccupied man 
derived from this scheme, Rosalie said, as she kissed him, 
‘Above all, do not tell mamma who gave you the notion ; 
she would scold me.’’ 

‘‘Do not be afraid !’’ replied Monsieur de Watteville, who 
groaned as bitterly as his daughter under the tyranny of the 
terrible descendant of the Rupts. 

So Rosalie had a certain prospect of seeing ere long a 
charming observatory built, whence her eyes would command 
the lawyer’s private room. And there are men for whose 
sake young girls can carry out such master-strokes of di- 
plomacy, while, for the most part, like Albert Savaron, 
they know it not. 

The Sunday so impatiently looked for arrived, and Rosalie 
dressed with such carefulness as made Mariette, the ladies’ 
maid, smile. 

**It is the first time I ever knew mademoiselle to be so 
fidgety,’’ said Mariette. 

“It strikes me,’’ said Rosalie, with a glance at Mariette, 
which brought poppies to her cheeks, ‘‘ that you too are more 
particular on some days than on others.”’ 

As she went down the steps, across the courtyard, and 
through the gates, Rosalie’s heart beat, as everybody’s does 
in anticipation of a great event. Hitherto she had never 
known what it was to walk in the streets; for a moment she 
had felt as though her mother must read her schemes on her 
brow, and forbid her going to confession, and she now felt 
new blood in her feet, she lifted them as though she trod on 
fire. She had, of course, arranged to be with her confessor 
at a quarter-past eight, telling her mother eight, so as to have 
about a quarter of an hour near Albert. She got to church 


ALBERT SAVARON. 308 


before mass, and after a short prayer, went to see if the Abbé 
Giroud were in his confessional, simply to pass the time; and 
she thus placed herself in such a way as to see Albert as he 
came into church. 

The man must have been atrociously ugly who did not 
seem handsome to Mademoiselle de Watteville in the frame 
of mind produced by her curiosity. And Albert Savaron, 
who was really very striking, made all the more impression 
on Rosalie because his mien, his walk, his carriage, everything 
down to his clothing, had the indescribable stamp which can 
only be expressed by the word mystery. 

He came in. The church, till now gloomy, seemed to 
Rosalie to be illuminated. The girl was fascinated by his 
slow and solemn demeanor, as of a man who bears a world 
on his shoulders, and whose deep gaze, whose very gestures, 
combine to express a devastating or absorbing thought. Ro- 
salie now understood the vicar-general’s words in their fullest 
extent. Yes, those eyes of tawny brown, shot with golden 
lights, covered an ardor which revealed itself in sudden flashes. 
Rosalie, with a recklessness which Mariette noted, stood in 
the lawyer’s way, so as to exchange glances with him; and 
this glance turned her blood, for it seethed and boiled as 
though its warmth were doubled. 

As soon as Albert had taken a seat, Mademoiselle de Watte- 
ville quickly found a place whence she could see him perfectly 
during all the time the abbé might leave her. When Mariette 
said *‘ Here is Monsieur Giroud,’’ it seemed to Rosalie that 
the interval had lasted no more than a few minutes. By 
the time she came out from the confessional, mass was over. 
Albert had left the church. 

‘The vicar-general was right,’’ thought she. ‘He is 
unhappy. Why should this eagle—for he has the eyes of an 
eagle—swoop down on Besancon? Oh! I must know every- 
thing! But how?” 

Under the smart of this new desire Rosalie set the stitches 


310 ALBERT SAVARON. 


of her worsted-work with exquisite precision, and hid her 
meditations under a little innocent air, which shammed sim- 
plicity to deceive Madame de Watteville. 

From that Sunday, when Mademoiselle de Watteville had 
met that look, or, if you please, received this baptism of fire— 
a fine expression of Napoleon’s which may be well applied to 
love—she eagerly promoted the plan for the Belvedere. 

‘“*Mamma,’’ said she one day when two columns were 
turned, ‘‘ my father has taken a singular idea into his head ; 
he is turning columns for a Belvedere he intends to erect on 
the heap of stones in the middle of the garden. Do you 
approve of it? It seems to me ee 

‘*T approve of everything your father does,’’ said Madame 
de Watteville drily, ‘‘ and it is a wife’s duty to submit to her 
husband even if she does not approve of his ideas. Why 
should I object to a thing which is of no importance in itself, 
if it only amuses Monsieur de Watteville ?”’ 

‘‘ Well, because from thence we shall see into Monsieur de 
Soulas’ rooms, and Monsieur de Soulas will see us when we are 
there. Perhaps remarks may be made oy 

““Do you presume, Rosalie, to guide your parents, and 
think you know more than they do of life and the pro- 
prieties ?”’ 

‘I say no more, mamma. Besides, my father said that 
there would be a room in the grotto, where it would be cool, 
and where we can take coffee.’’ 

‘‘ Your father has had an excellent idea,’’ said Madame de 
Watteville, who forthwith went to look at the columns. 

She gave her entire approbation to the Baron de Watteville’s 
design, while choosing for the erection of this monument a 
spot at the bottom of the garden, which could not be seen 
from Monsieur de Soulas’ windows, but whence they could 
perfectly see into Albert Savaron’s rooms. A builder was 
sent for, who undertook to construct a grotto, of which the 
top should be reached by a path three feet wide through the 








ALBERT SAVARON. 311 


rock-work, where periwinkles would grow, iris, clematis, ivy, 
honeysuckle, and Virginia creeper. The Baroness desired that 
the inside should be lined with rustic woodwork, such as was 
then the fashion for flower-stands, with a looking-glass against 
the wall, an ottoman forming a box, and a table of inlaid bark. 
Monsieur de Soulas proposed that the floor should be of 
asphalt. Rosalie suggested a hanging chandelier of rustic 
wood. 

“<The Wattevilles are having something charming done in 
their garden,’’ was rumored in Besancon. 

‘** They are rich, and can afford a thousand crowns for a 
whim——”’ 

**A thousand crowns!’’ exclaimed Madame de Chavon- 
court. 

** Yes, a thousand crowns,’’ cried young Monsieur de Soulas. 
** A man has been sent for from Paris to rusticate the interior, 
but it will be very pretty. Monsieur de Watteville himself is 
making the chandelier, and has begun to carve the wood.”’ 

‘* Berquet is to make a cellar under it,’’ said an abbé. 

** No,”’ replied young Monsieur de Soulas, ‘‘ he is raising 
the kiosk on a concrete foundation, that it may not be 
damp.’”’ 

‘You know the very least things that are done in that 
house,’’ said Madame de Chavoncourt sourly, as she looked at 
one of her great girls waiting to be married for a year past. 

Mademoiselle de Watteville, with a little flush of pride in 
thinking of the success of her Belvedere, discerned in herself 
a vast superiority over every one about her. No one guessed 
that a little girl, supposed to be a witless goose, had simply 
made up her mind to get a closer view of the lawyer Savaron’s 
private study. 

Albert Savaron’s brilliant defense of the Cathedral Chapter 
was all the sooner forgotten because the envy of other lawyers 
was aroused. Also, Savaron, faithful to his seclusion, went 
nowhere. Having no friends to cry him up, and seeing no 


312 ALBERT SAVARON. 


one, he increased the chances of being forgotten which are 
common to strangers in such a town as Besancon. Neverthe- 
less, he pleaded three times at the commercial tribunal in 
three knotty cases which had to be carried to the superior 
court. He thus gained as clients four of the chief merchants 
of the place, who discerned in him so much good sense and 
sound legal discernment that they placed their claims in his 
hands. 

On the day when the Watteville family inaugurated the 
Belvedere, Savaron also was founding a monument. Thanks 
to the connections he had obscurely formed among the upper 
class of merchants in Besancon, he was starting a fortnightly 
paper, called the Zastern Review, with the help of forty 
shares of five hundred francs each, taken up by his ten first 
clients, on whom he had impressed the necessity for promo- 
ting the interests of Besangon, the town where the traffic 
should meet between Mulhouse and Lyons, and the chief 
centre between Mulhouse and the Rhone. 

To compete with Strasbourg, was it not needful that Besan- 
con should become a focus of enlightenment as well as of 
trade? The leading questions relating to the interests of 
Eastern France could only be dealt with in a review. What 
a glorious task to rob Strasbourg and Dijon of their literary 
importance, to bring light to the East of France, and compete 
with the centralizing influence of Paris! These reflections, 
put forward by Albert, were repeated by the ten merchants, 
who believed them to be their own. 

Monsieur Savaron did not commit the blunder of putting his 
name in front ; he left the finances of the concern to his chief 
client, Monsieur Boucher, connected by marriage with one of 
the great publishers of important ecclesiastical works ; but he 
kept the editorship, with a share of the profits as founder. 
The commercial interest appealed to Déle, to Dijon, to 
Salins, to Neufchatel, to the Jura, Bourg, Nantua, Lous-le- 
Saulnier. The concurrence was invited of the learning and 


- ALBERT SAVARON. 313 


energy of every scientific student in the districts of le Bugey, 
la Bresse, and Franche Comté. By the influence of com- 
mercial interests and common feeling, five hundred sub- 
scribers were booked in consideration of the low price: the 
Review cost eight francs a quarter. 

To avoid hurting the conceit of the provincials by refusing 
their articles, the lawyer hit on the good idea of suggesting a 
desire for the literary management of this Review to Monsieur 
Boucher’s eldest son, a young man of two-and-twenty, very 
eager for fame, to whom the snares and woes of literary 
responsibilities were utterly unknown. Albert quietly kept 
the upper hand, and made Alfred Boucher his devoted 
adherent. Alfred was the only man in Besancon with whom 
the king of the bar was on familiar terms. Alfred came in the 
morning to discuss the articles for the next number with 
Albert in the garden. It is needless to say that the trial num- 
ber contained a ‘‘ Meditation’’ by Alfred, which Savaron 
approved. In his conversations with Alfred, Albert would 
let drop some great ideas, subjects for articles of which 
Alfred availed himself. And thus the merchant’s son fancied 
he was making capital out of the great man. To Alfred, 
‘Albert was a man of genius, of profound politics. The com- 
mercial world, enchanted at the success of the Review, had to 
pay up only three-tenths of their shares. Two hundred more 
subscribers, and the periodical would pay a dividend to the 
shareholders of five per cent., the editor remaining unpaid. 
This editing, indeed, was beyond price. ; 

After the third number the Review was recognized for ex- 
change by all the papers published in France, which Albert 
henceforth read at home. This third number included a tale 
signed ‘‘ A. S.,’’ and attributed to the famous lawyer. In 
spite of the small attention paid by the higher circle of 
Besancon to the Review, which was accused of liberal views, 
this, the first novel produced in the county, came under dis- 
cussion that mid-winter at Madame de Chavoncourt’s. 


314 ALBERT SAVARON. 


‘¢ Papa,’’ said Rosalie, ‘‘a Review is published in Besan- 
con ; you ought to take it in; and keep it in your room, 
for mamma would not let me read it, but you will lend it to 
me.”’ 

Monsieur de Watteville, eager to obey his dear Rosalie, 
who for the last five months had given him so many proofs 
of filial affection—Monsieur de Watteville went in person 
to subscribe for a year to the Zastern Review and loaned 
the four numbers already out to his daughter. In the course 
of the night Rosalie devoured the tale—the first she had ever 
read in her life—but she had only known life for two months 
past. Hence the effect produced on her by this work must 
not be judged by ordinary rules. Without prejudice of any 
kind as to the greater or less merit of this composition from 
the pen of a Parisian who had thus imported into the province 
the manner, the brilliancy, if you will, of the new literary 
school, it could not fail to be a masterpiece to a young girl 
abandoning all her intelligence and her innocent heart to her 
first reading of this kind. 

Also, from what she had heard said, Rosalie had by intuition 
conceived a notion of it which strangely enhanced the interest 
of this novel. She hoped to find in it the sentiments, and 
perhaps something of the life of Albert. From the first pages 
this opinion took so strong a hold on her, that, after reading 
the fragment to the end, she was certain that it was no mistake. 
Here, then, is this confession, in which, according to the 
critics of Madame de Chavoncourt’s drawing-room, Albert 
had imitated some modern writers, who, for lack of inventive- 
ness, relate their private joys, their private griefs, or the mys- 
terious events of their own life: 


AMBITION FOR LOVE’S SAKE. 


In 1823 two young men, having agreed as a plan for a holi- 
day to make a tour through Switzerland, set out from Lucerne 


ALBERT SAVARON. 315 


one fine morning in the month of July in a boat pulled by 
three oarsmen. They started for Fluelen, intending to stop 
at every notable spot on the lake of the four cantons. The 
views which shut in the waters on the way from Lucerne to 
Fluelen offer every combination that the most exacting fancy 
can demand of mountains and rivers, lakes and rocks, brooks, 
and pastures, trees, and torrents. Here are austere solitudes 
and charming headlands, smiling and trimly kept meadows, 
forests.crowning perpendicular granite cliffs like plumes, 
deserted but verdant reaches opening out, and valleys whose 
beauty seems the lovelier in the dreamy distance. 

As they passed the pretty hamlet of Gersau, one of the 
friends looked for a long time at a wooden house which seemed 
to have been recently built, enclosed by a paling, and stand- 
ing on a promontory, almost bathed by the waters. As the boat 
rowed past, a woman’s head was raised against the background 
of the room on the upper story of this house, to admire the 
effect of the boat on the lake. One of the young men met 
the glance thus indifferently given by the unknown fair one. 

“* Let us stop here,’’ said he to his friend. ‘‘ We meant to 
make Lucerne our headquarters for seeing Switzerland ; you 
will not take it amiss, Léopold, if I change my mind and stay 
here to take charge of our possessions. Then you can go 
where you please; my journey is ended. Pull to land, men, 
and put us out at this village; we will breakfast here. I will 
go back to Lucerne to fetch all our luggage, and before you 
leave you will know in which house I take a lodging, where 
you will find me on your return.” 

“‘ Here or at Lucerne,’’ replied Léopold, ‘the difference 
is not so great that I need hinder you from following your 
whim.”’ 

These two youths were friends in the truest sense of the 
word. They were of the same age; they had learned at the 
same school; and after studying the law, they were spending 
their holiday in the classical tour in Switzerland. Léopold, 


316 ALBERT SAVARON. 


by his father’s determination, was already pledged to a place 
in a notary’s office in Paris. His spirit of rectitude, his gen- 
tleness, and the coolness of his senses and his brain, guaran- 
teed him to be a docile pupil. Léopold could see himself a 
notary in Paris: his life lay before him like one of the high- 
roads that cross the plains of France, and he looked along its 
whole length with philosophical resignation. 

The character of his companion, whom we will call Ro- 
dolphe, presented a strong contrast with Léopold’s, and their 
antagonism had no doubt had the result of tightening the 
bond that united them. Rodolphe was the natural son of a 
man of rank, who was carried off by a premature death before 
he could make any arrangements for securing the means of 
existence to a woman he fondly loved and to Rodolphe, 
Thus cheated by a stroke of fate, Rodolphe’s mother had re- 
course to a heroic measure. She sold everything she owed to 
the munificence of her child’s father for a sum of more than 
a hundred thousand francs, bought with it a life annuity for 
herself at a high rate, and thus acquired an income of about 
fifteen thousand francs, resolving to devote the whole of it to 
the education of her son, so as to give him all the personal 
advantages that might help to make his fortune, while saving, 
by strict economy, a small capital to be his when he came of 
age. It was bold; it was counting on her own life; but with- 
out this boldness the good mother would certainly have found 
it impossible to live and to bring her child up suitably, and 
he was her only hope, her future, the spring of all her joys. 

Rodolphe, the son of a most charming Parisian woman, 
and a man of mark, a nobleman of Brabant, was cursed with 
extreme sensitiveness. From his infancy he had in every- 
thing shown a most ardent nature. In him mere desire be- 
came a guiding force and the motive power of his whole being, 
the stimulus to his imagination, the reason of his actions. 
Notwithstanding the pains taken by a clever mother, who 
was alarmed when she detected this predisposition, Rodolphe 


ALBERT SAVARON. 317 


wished for things as a poet imagines, as a mathematician cal- 
culates, as a painter sketches, as a musician creates melodies. 
Tender-hearted, like his mother, he dashed with inconceivable 
violence and impetus of thought after the object of his desires ; 
he annihilated time.. While dreaming of the fulfillment of 
his schemes, he always overlooked the means of attainment. 
‘*When my son has children,’’ said his mother, ‘he will 
want them born grown up.’’ 

This fine frenzy, carefully directed, enabled Rodolphe to 
achieve his studies with brilliant results, and to become what 
the English call an accomplished gentleman. His mother 
was then proud of him, though still fearing a catastrophe if 
ever a passion should possess a heart at once so tender and so 
susceptible, so vehement and so kind. Therefore, the judi- 
cious mother had encouraged the friendship which bound 
Léopold to Rodolphe and Rodolphe to Léopold, since she 
saw in the cold and faithful young notary a guardian, a com- 
rade, who might to a certain extent take her place if by some 
misfortune she should be lost to herson. Rodolphe’s mother, 
still handsome at three-and-forty, had inspired Léopold with 
an ardent passion. This circumstance made the two young 
men even more intimate. 

So Léopold, knowing Rodolphe well, was not surprised to 
find him stopping at a village and giving up the projected 
journey to Saint-Gothard, on the strength of a single glance 
at the upper window of a house. While breakfast was pre- 
pared for them at the Swan Inn, the friends walked round the 
hamlet and came to the neighborhood of the pretty new house ; 
here, while gazing about him and talking to the inhabitants, 
Rodolphe discovered the residence of some decent folk, who 
were willing to take him as a boarder, a very frequent custom 
in Switzerland. They offered him a bedroom looking over 
the lake and the mountains, and whence he had a view of one 
of those immense sweeping reaches which, in this lake, are 
the admiration of every traveler. This house was divided by 


318 ALBERT SAVARON. 


a roadway and a little creek from the new house, where Ro- 
dolphe had caught sight of the unknown fair one’s face. 

For a hundred francs a month Rodolphe was relieved of all 
thought for the necessaries of life. But, in consideration of 
the outlay the Stopfer couple expected to make, they bar- 
gained for three months’ residence and a month’s payment in 
advance. Rub a Swiss ever so little, and you find the usurer. 
After breakfast, Rodolphe at once made himself at home by 
depositing in his room such property as he had brought with 
him for the journey to the Saint-Gothard, and he watched 
Léopold as he set out, moved by the spirit of routine, to carry 
out the excursion for himself and his friend. When Rodolphe, 
sitting on a fallen rock on the shore, could no longer see 
Léopold’s boat, he turned to examine the new house with 
stolen glances, hoping to see the fair unknown, Alas! he 
went in without its having given a sign of life. During din- 
ner, in the company of Monsieur and Madame Stopfer, 
retired coopers from Neufchatel, he questioned them as to 
the neighborhood, and ended by learning all he wanted to 
know about the lady, thanks to his hosts’ loquacity ; for they 
were ready to pour out their budget of gossip without any 
pressing. 

The fair stranger’s name was Fanny Lovelace. This name 
(pronounced Loveless) is that of an old English family, but 
Richardson has given it to a creation whose fame eclipses all 
others! Miss Lovelace had come to settle by the lake for 
her father’s health, the physicians having recommended him 
the air of Lucerne. These two English people had arrived 
with no other servant than a little girl of fourteen, a dumb 
child, much attached to Miss Fanny, on whom she waited 
very intelligently, and had settled, two winters since, with 
Monsieur and Madame Bergmann, the retired head-gardeners 
of his excellency Count Borromeo of Isola Bella and Isola 
Madre in the Lago Maggiore. These Swiss, who were pos- 
sessed of an income of about a thousand crowns a year, had 


ALBERT SAVARON. 319 


let the top story of their house to the Lovelaces for three 
years, at a rent of two hundred francs a year. Old Lovelace, 
a man of ninety, and much broken, was too poor to allow 
himself any gratifications, and very rarely went out; his 
daughter worked to maintain him, translating English books, 
and writing some herself, it was said. The Lovelaces could 
not afford to hire boats to row on the lake, or horses and 
guides to explore the neighborhood. 

Poverty demanding such privation as this excites all the 
greater compassion among the Swiss, because it deprives them 
of a chance of profit. The cook of the establishment fed 
the three English. boarders for a hundred francs a month 
inclusive. In Gersau it was generally believed, however, that 
the gardener and his wife, in spite of their pretensions, used 
the cook’s name as a screen to net the little profits of this 
bargain. The Bergmanns had made beautiful gardens round 
their house, and had built a hothouse. The flowers, the 
fruit, and the botanical rarities of this spot were what had 
induced the young lady to settle on it as she passed through 
Gersau. Miss Fanny was said to be nineteen years old ; she 
was the old man’s youngest child, and the object of his adula- 
tion. About two months prior she had hired a piano from 
Lucerne, for she seemed to be crazy about music, his hosts 
informed him. 

‘*She loves flowers and music, and she is unmarried!’’ 
thought Rodolphe ; ‘‘ what good luck! ”’ 

The next day Rodolphe went to ask leave to visit the hot- 
houses and gardens, which were beginning to be somewhat 
famous. The permission was not immediately granted. The 
retired gardeners asked, strangely enough, to see Rodolphe’s 
passport ; it was sent tothemat once. ‘The paper was not re- 
turned to him till next morning, by the hands of the cook, 
who expressed her master’s pleasure in showing him their 
place. Rodolphe went to the Bergmanns, not without a cer- 
tain trepidation, known only to persons of strong feelings, 


320 ALBERT SAVARON. 


who go through as much passion in a moment as some men 
experience in a whole lifetime. 

After dressing himself carefully to gratify the old gardeners 
of the Borromean Islands, whom he regarded as the warders 
of his treasure, he went all over the grounds, looking at the 
house now and again, but with much caution ; the old couple 
treated him with evident distrust. But his attention was soon 
attracted by the little English deaf-mute, in whom his discern- 
ment, though young as yet, enabled him to recognize a girl 
of African, of at least of Sicilian origin. The child had the 
golden-brown color of a Havana cigar, eyes of fire, Armenian 
eyelids with lashes of very un-British length, hair blacker than 
black ; and under this almost olive skin, sinews of extraordi- 
nary strength and feverish alertness. She looked at Rodolphe 
with amazing curiosity and effrontery, watching his every 
movement. 

‘“*To whom does that little Moresco belong?’’ he asked 
worthy Madame Bergmann. 

‘¢ To the English,’’ Monsieur Bergmann replied. 

‘¢ But she never was born in England! ’”’ 

‘¢ They may have, perhaps, brought her ‘tome the Indies,’’ 
said Madame Bergmann. 

‘*T have been told that Miss Lovelace is fond of music. I 
should be delighted if, during the residence by the lake to 
which I am condemned by my doctor’s orders, she would 
allow me to join her.’’ 

«¢ They receive no one, and will not see anybody,”’ said the 
old gardener. 

Rodolphe bit his lips and went away, without having been 
invited into the house, or taken into the part of the garden 
that lay between the front ofthe house and the shore of the 
little promontory. On that side the house had a balcony 
above the first floor, made of wood, and covered by the roof, 
which projected deeply like the roof of a chalet on all four 
sides, of the building, in the Swiss fashion. Rodolphe had 


ALBERT SAVARON. 321 


loudly praised the elegance of this arrangement, and talked 
of the view from that balcony, but all in vain. When he had 
taken leave of the Bergmanns it struck him that he was a 
simpleton, like any man of spirit and imagination disappointed 
of the result of a plan which he had believed would succeed. 

In the evening he, of course, went out in a boat on the 
lake, round and about the spit of land, to Brunnen and to 
Schwytz, and came in at nightfall. From afar he saw the 
window open and brightly. lighted; he heard the sound of a 
piano and the tones of an exquisite voice. He made the 
boatmen stop, and gave himself up to the pleasure of listening 
to an Italian air delightfully sung. When the singing ceased, 
Rodolphe landed and sent away the boat and rowers. At the 
cost of wetting his feet, he went to sit down under the water- 
worn granite shelf crowned by a thick hedge of thorny acacia, 
by the side of which ran a long lime avenue in the Berg- 
manns’ garden. By the end of an hour he heard steps and 
voices just above him, but the words that reached his ears 
were all Italian, and spoken by two women. 

He took advantage of the moment when the two speakers 
were at one end of the walk to slip noiselessly to the otlier. 
After half an hour of struggling he got to the end of the 
avenue, and there took up a position whence, without being 
seen or heard, he could watch the two women without being 
observed by them as they came towards him. What was Ro- 
dolphe’s amazement on recognizing the deaf-mute as one of 
them ; she was talking to Miss Lovelace in Italian. 

It was now eleven o’clock at night. The stillness was so 
perfect on the lake and around the dwelling that the two 
women must have thought themselves safe; in all Gersau 
there could be no eyes open but theirs. Rodolphe supposed 
that the girl’s dumbness.must be a necessary deception. 
From the way in which they both spoke Italian, Rodolphe 
suspected that it was the mother tongue of both girls, and 
concluded that the English name also hid some disguise. 

21 


322 ALBERT SAVARON. 


‘« They are Italian refugees,’’ said he to himself, ** outlaws 
in fear of the Austrian or Sardinian police. The young lady 
waits till it is dark to walk and talk in security.’’ 

He lay down by the side of the hedge, and crawled like a 
snake to find a way between two acacia shrubs. At the risk 
of leaving his coat behind him, or tearing deep scratches in 
his back, he got through the hedge when the so-called Miss 
Fanny and her pretended deaf-and-dumb maid were at the 
other end of the path; then, when they had come within 
twenty yards of him without seeing him, for he was in the 
shadow of the hedge, and the moon was shining brightly, he 
suddenly rose. 

‘‘ Fear nothing,’’ said he in French to the Italian girl, ‘I 
am notaspy. You are refugees, I have guessed that. Iam 
a Frenchman whom one look from you has fixed at Gersau.”’ 

Rodolphe, startled by the acute pain caused by some steel 
instrument piercing his side, fell like a log. 

«* Nel lago con pietra /’’ said the terrible dumb girl. 

‘¢Oh, Gina! ’”’ exclaimed the Italian. 

‘‘She has missed me,’’ said Rodolphe, pulling from the 
wound a stiletto, which had been turned by one of the false 
ribs. ‘‘ But a little higher up it would have been deep in my 
heart. I was wrong, Francesca,’’ he went on, remembering 
the name he had heard little Gina repeat several times; ‘*I 
owe her no grudge, do not scold her. The happiness of 
speaking to you is well worth the prick of a stiletto. Only 
show me the way out; I must get back to the Stopfers’ house. 
Be easy ; I shall tell nothing.’’ 

Francesca, recovering from her astonishment, helped Ro- 
dolphe to rise, and said a few words to Gina, whose eyes filled 
with tears. The two girls made him sit down on a bench and 
take off his coat, his waistcoat, and his cravat. Then Gina 
opened his shirt and sucked the wound strongly. Francesca, 
who had left them, returned with a large piece of sticking- 
plaster, which she applied to the wound. 


ALBERT SAVARON. 323 


** You can walk now as far as your house,”’ she said. 

Each took an arm, and Rodolphe was conducted to a side 
gate, of which the key was in Francesca’s apron pocket. 

** Does Gina speak French ?’’ said Rodolphe to Francesca. 

**No. But do not excite yourself,’’ replied Francesca with 
some impatience. 

*« Let me look at you,’’ said Rodolphe pathetically, ‘‘ for it 
may be long before I am able to come again ~ 

He leaned against one of the gate-posts contemplating the 
beautiful Italian, who allowed him to gaze at her for a moment 
under the sweetest silence and the sweetest night that ever, 
perhaps, shone on this lake, the king of these beautiful Swiss 
lakes. 

Francesca was quite of the classic Italian type, and such as 
imagination supposes or pictures, or, if you will, dreams, that 
Italian women are. What first struck Rodolphe was the grace 
and elegance of a figure evidently powerful, though so slender 
as to appear fragile. An amber paleness overspread her face, 
betraying sudden interest, but it did not dim the voluptuous 
glance of her liquid eyes of velvety blackness. A pair of 
hands as beautiful as ever a Greek sculptor added to the 
polished arms of a statue grasped Rodolphe’s arm, and their 
whiteness gleamed against his black coat. The rash French- 
man could but just discern the long, oval shape of her face, 
and a melancholy mouth showing brilliant teeth between the 
parted lips, full, fresh, and brightly red. The exquisite lines 
of this face guaranteed to Francesca permanent beauty ; but 
what most struck Rodolphe was the adorable freedom, the 
Italian frankness of this woman, wholly absorbed as she was 
in her pity for him. 

Francesca said a word to Gina, who gave Rodolphe her arm 
as far as the Stopfers’ door, and fled like a swallow as soon as 
she had rung. 

‘« These patriots do not play at killing!’’ said Rodolphe to 
himself as he felt his sufferings when he found himself in his 





324 ALBERT SAVARON. 


bed. ‘‘ * Mel Jago /’ Gina would have pitched me into the 
lake with a stone tied to my neck.”’ 

Next day he sent to Lucerne for the best surgeon there, and 
when the surgeon came, enjoined on him absolute secrecy, 
giving him to understand that his honor strictly depended on 
such observance. : 

Léopold returned from his excursion on the day when his 
friend first got out of bed. Rodolphe made up a story, and 
begged him to go to Lucerne to fetch their luggage and letters. 
Léopold brought back the most fatal, the most dreadful 
news: Rodolphe’s mother was dead. While the two friends 
were on their way from B&le to Lucerne, the fatal letter, 
written by Léopold’s father, had reached Lucerne the day 
they left for Fluelen. 

In spite of Léopold’s utmost precautions, Rodolphe fell ill 
of a nervous fever. As soon as Léopold saw his friend out 
of danger, he set out for France with a power of attorney, 
and Rodolphe could thus remain at Gersau, the only place in 
the world where his grief could grow calmer. The young 
Frenchman’s position, his despair, the circumstances which 
made such a loss worse for him than for any other man, were 
known, and secured him the pity and interest of every one at 
Gersau. Every morning the pretended dumb girl came to 
see him and bring him news of her mistress. 

As soon as Rodolphe could go out he went to the Berg- 
manns’ house, to thank Miss Fanny Lovelace and her father 
for the interest they had taken in his sorrow and his illness. 
For the first time since he had lodged with the Bergmanns the 
old Italian admitted a stranger to his room, where Rodolphe 
was received with the cordiality due to his misfortunes and to 
his being a Frenchman, which excluded all distrust of him. 
Francesca looked so lovely by candlelight that first evening 
that she shed a ray of brightness on his grieving heart. Her 
smiles flung the roses of hope on his woe. She sang, not_ 
indeed gay songs, but grave and solemn melodies suited to 


ALBERT SAVARON. 325 


the state of Rodolphe’s heart, and he observed this touching 
care. 

At about eight o’clock the old man left the young people 
without any sign of uneasiness, and went to his room. When 
Francesca was tired of singing, she led Rodolphe on to the - 
balcony, whence they perceived the sublime scenery of the 
lake, and signed to him to be seated by her on a rustic 
wooden bench. 

‘Am I very indiscreet in asking how old you are, cara 
Francesca?’’ said Rodolphe. 

** Nineteen,’’ said she, ‘‘ well past.”’ 

**If anything in the world could soothe my sorrow,’’ he 
went on, ‘‘it would be the hope of winning you from your 
father, whatever your fortune may be. So beautiful as you 
are, you seem to me richer than a prince’s daughter. And I 
tremble as I confess to you the feelings with which you have 
inspired me; but they are deep—they are eternal.”’ 

‘* Zitto/’’ said Francesca, laying a finger of her right hand 
on her lips. ‘‘Say no more; I am not free. I have been 
married these three years.’’ 

For a few minutes utter silence reigned. When the Italian 
girl, alarmed at Rodolphe’s stillness, went close to him, she 
found that he had fainted. 

*¢ Povero /’’ shesaid toherself. ‘‘And I thought him cold.” 

She fetched some salts, and revived Rodolphe by making 
him smell at them. 

*< Married !”’ said Rodolphe, looking at Francesca. And 
then his tears flowed freely. 

«©Child!”’ said she. ‘‘ But there still is hope. My hus- 
band is is 

‘«¢ Kighty?’’ Rodolphe put in. 

‘¢ No,” said she with a smile, ‘‘ but sixty-five. He has dis- 
guised himself as much older to mislead the police.” 

«< Dearest,’’ said Rodolphe, ‘‘a few more shocks of this 
kind and I shall die, Only when you have known me 





e 


326 ALBERT SAVARON, 


twenty years will you understand the strength and power of 
my heart, and the nature of its aspirations for happiness. 
This plant,’’ he went on, pointing to the’ yellow jasmine 
which covered the balustrade, ‘‘ does not climb more eagerly 
to spread itself in the sunbeams than I have clung to you for 
this month past. I love you passionately. That love will be 
the secret fount of my life—I may possibly die of it.’’ 

‘‘Oh! Frenchman, Frenchman!’’ said she, emphasizing 
her exclamation with a little incredulous grimace. 

‘© Shall I not be forced to wait, to accept you at the hands 
of time?’’ said he gravely. ‘‘ But know this; if you are in 
earnest in what you have allowed to escape you, I will wait 
for you faithfully, without suffering any other attachment to 
grow up in my heart.’”’ 

She looked at him doubtfully. 

‘‘None,’’ said he, ‘‘ not even a passing fancy. * I have my 
fortune to make ; you must have a splendid one, nature created 
you a princess ” 

At this word Francesca could not repress a faint smile, 
which gave her face the most bewitching expression, some- 
thing subtle, like what the great Leonardo has so well depicted 
in the Gioconda. This smile made Rodolphe pause. ‘* Ah, 
yes!’’ he went on, “‘ you must suffer much from the destitu- 
tion to which exile has brought you. Oh, if you would make 
me happy above all men, and consecrate my love, you would 
treat me asa friend. Ought I not to be your friend? My 
poor mother has left sixty thousand francs of savings; take 
half.’’ 

Francesca looked steadily at him. This piercing gaze went 
to the bottom of Rodolphe’s soul. 

‘¢ We want nothing ; my work amply supplies our luxuries,” 
she replied in a grave voice. 

‘«¢ And can I endure that a Francesca should work ?”’ cried 
he. ‘One day you will return to your country and find all 
you left there.’’ Again the Italian girl looked at Rodolphe. 





ALBERT SAVARON. 327 


‘And you will then repay me what you may have conde- 
scended to borrow,’’ he added, with an expression full of 
delicate feeling. 

*‘Let us drop this subject,’’ said she, with incomparable 
dignity of gesture, expression, and attitude. ~‘‘ Make a splen- 
did fortune, be one of the remarkable men of your country ; 
that is my desire. Fame is a drawbridge which may serve to 
cross a deep gulf. Be ambitious, if you must. I believe you 
have great and powerful talents, but use them rather for the 
happiness of mankind than to deserve me; you will be all the 
greater in my eyes.’’. 

In the course of this conversation, which lasted two hours, 
Rodolphe discovered that Francesca was an enthusiast for 
liberal ideas, and for that worship of liberty which had led to 
the three revolutions in Naples, Piédmont, and Spain. On 
leaving, he was shown to the door by Gina, the so-called 
mute. At eleven o’clock no one was astir in the village, 
there was no fear of listeners; Rodolphe took Gina into a 
corner, and asked her in a low voice and bad Italian, ‘* Who 
are your master and mistress, child? Tell me, I will give 
you this fine new gold-piece.’’ 

‘* Monsieur,’’ said the girl, taking the coin, ‘‘ my master is 
the famous bookseller Lamporani of Milan, one of the leaders of 
the revolution, and the conspirator of all others whom Austria 
would most like to have in the Spielberg.’’ 

**A bookseller’s wife! Ah, so much the better,’’ thought 
he ; ‘* we areon an equal footing. And what is her family ?”’ 
he added, ‘‘ for she looks like a queen.”’ 

‘¢ All Italian women do,’’ replied Gina proudly. ‘‘ Her 
father’s name is Colonna.”’ 

Emboldened by Francesca’s modest rank, Rodolphe had an 
awning fitted to his boat and cushions in the stern. When 
this was done, the lover came to propose to Francesca to come 
out on the lake. The Italian accepted, no doubt to carry out 
her part of a young English miss in the eyes of the villagers, 


828 ALBERT SAVARON. 


but she brought Gina with her. Francesca Colonna’s lightest 
actions betrayed a superior education and the highest social 
rank. By the way in which she took her place at the end of 
the boat Rodolphe felt himself in some sort cut off from her, 
and, in the face of a look of pride worthy of an aristocrat, 
the familiarity he had intended fell dead. By a glance Fran- 
cesca made herself a princess, with all the prerogatives she 
might have enjoyed in the middle ages. She seemed to have 
read the thoughts of this vassal who was so audacious as to 
constitute himself her protector. 

Already, in the furniture of the room where Francesca had 
received him, in her dress, and in the various trifles she made 
use of, Rodolphe had detected indications of a superior char- 
acter and a fine fortune. All these observations now recurred 
to his mind; he became thoughtful after having been trampled 
on, as it were, by Francesca’s dignity. Gina, her half-grown-up 
confidante, also seemed to have a mocking expression as she 
gave a covert or side glance at Rodolphe. This obvious disa- 
greement between the Italian lady’s rank and her manners was 
a fresh puzzle to Rodolphe, who suspected some further trick 
like Gina’s assumed dumbness. 

‘¢ Where would you go, Signora Lamporani ?’”’ he asked. 

‘* Towards Lucerne,’’ replied Francesca in French, 

‘‘Good!’’ said Rodolphe to himself, ‘she is not startled 
by hearing me speak her name; she had, no doubt, foreseen 
that I should ask Gina—she is so cunning. What is your 
quarrel with me?’’ he went on, going at last to sit down by 
her side, and asking her by a gesture to give him her hand, 
which she withdrew. ‘‘ You are cold and ceremonious ; what, 
in colloquial language, we should call shor+.’’ 

‘«Tt is true,’’ she replied with asmile. ‘‘I am wrong. It 
is not good manners; it is vulgar. In French you would call it 
inartistic. It is better to be frank than to harbor cold or 
hostile feelings towards a friend, and you have already proved 
yourself my friend. Perhaps I have gone too far with you. 


ALBERT SAVARON. 329 


You must have taken me to be a very ordinary woman.’’ 
Rodolphe made many signs of denial. ‘‘ Yes,’’ said the 
bookseller’s wife, going on without noticing this pantomime, 
which, however, she plainly saw. ‘‘I have detected that, and 
naturally I have reconsidered my conduct. Well! I will put 
an end to everything by a few words of deep truth. Under- 
stand this, Rodolphe: I feel in myself the strength to stifle a 
feeling if it were not in harmony with my ideas or anticipation 
of what true love is. I could love—as we can love in Italy, 
but Iknow my duty. No intoxication can make me forget it. 
Married without my consent to that poor old man, I might take 
advantage of*the liberty he so generously gives me; but three 
years of married life imply acceptance of its laws. Hence the 
most vehement passion would never make me utter, even 
involuntarily, a wish to find myself free. 

** Emilio knows my character. He knows that without my 
heart, which is my own, and which I might give away, I 
should never allow any one to take my hand. That is why I 
have just refused it to you. I desire to be loved and waited 
for with fidelity, nobleness, ardor, while all I can give is 
infinite tenderness of which the expression may not overstep 
the boundary of the heart, the permitted neutral ground. All 
this being thoroughly understood. Oh!” she went on with a 
girlish gesture, “I will be as coquettish, as gay, as glad, asa 
child who knows comparatively nothing of the dangers of 

familiarity.’’ 

_ This plain and frank declaration was made in a tone, an 
accent, and supported by a look which gave it the deepest 
stamp of truth. 

**A Princess Colonna could not have spoken better,’’ said 
Rodolphe, smiling. 
‘«Ts that,’’ she answered with some haughtiness, ‘<a reflec- 
tion on the humbleness of my birth? Must your love flaunt 
a coat-of-arms? At Milan the noblest napjés are written over 
shop-doors: Sforza, Canova, Viscofici, Trivulzio, Ursini; 


330 ALBERT SAVARON. 


there are Archintos apothecaries ; but, believe me, though I 
keep a shop, I have the feelings of a duchess.”’ 

‘<A reflection! Nay, madame, I meant it for praise.” 

‘«« By comparison ?’’ she said archly. 

‘© Ah, once for all,” said he, “not to torture me if my 
words should ill express my feelings, understand that my love 
is perfect ; it carries with it absolute obedience and respect.’’ 

She bowed as a woman satisfied, and said, ‘‘ Then monsieur 
accepts the treaty ?”’ 

‘‘Ves,’’ said he. ‘*I can understand that in a rich and 
powerful feminine nature the faculty of loving ought not to be 
wasted, and that you, out of delicacy, wished to restrain it. 
Ah! Francesca, at my age tenderness requited, and by so 
sublime, so royally beautiful a creature as you are—why, it is 
the fulfillment of all my wishes. To love you as you desire to 
be loved—is not that enough to make a young man guard 
himself against every evil folly ? Is it not to concentrate all his 
powers in a noble passion, of which in the future he may 
be proud, and which can leave none but lovely memories? 
If you could but know with what hues you have clothed the 
chain of Pilatus, the Rigi, and this superb lake——” 

“¢T want to know,’’ said she, with the Italian artlessness 
which has always a touch of artfulness. 

‘¢ Well, this hour will shine on all my life like a diamond 
on a queen’s brow.”’ 

Francesca’s only reply was to lay her hand on Rodolphe’s. 

‘¢Oh dearest ! for ever dearest! Tell me, have you never 
loved ?”’ 

“¢ Never.”’ : 

«‘And you allow me to love you nobly, looking to heaven 
for the utmost fulfillment ? ’’ he asked. 

She gently bent her head. Two large tears rolled down 
Rodolphe’s cheeks. 

‘‘Why! what is the matter?’’ she cried, abandoning her 
imperial manner. 





ALBERT SAVARON. 331 


**T have now no mother whom I can tell of my happiness ; 
she left this earth without seeing what would have mitigated 
her agony——”’ 

«« What ?”’ said she. 

*«Her tenderness replaced by an equal tenderness—— 

** Povero mio/’’ exclaimed the Italian, much touched. 
“* Believe me,’’ she went on after a pause, ‘‘ it is a very sweet 
thing, and to a woman, a strong element of fidelity to know 
that she is all in all on earth to the man she loves; to find 
him lonely, with no family, with nothing in his heart but his 
love—in short, to have him wholly to herself.’’ 

When two lovers thus understand each other, the heart feels 
delicious peace, supreme tranquillity. Certainty is the basis 
for which human feelings crave, for it is never lacking to 
religious sentiment; man is always certain of being fully 
repaid by God. Love never believes itself secure but by this 
resemblance to divine love. And the raptures of that moment 
must have been fully felt to be understood; it is unique in 
life; it can never return again, alas! than the emotions of 
youth. To believe in a woman, to make her your human re- 
ligion, the fount of life, the secret luminary of all your least 
thoughts !—is not this a second birth? And a young man 
mingles with this love a little of the feeling he had for his 
mother. 

Rodolphe and Francesca for some time remained in perfect 
silence, answering each other by sympathetic glances full of 
thoughts. They understood each other in the midst of one 
of the most beautiful scenes of nature, whose glories, inter- 
preted by the glory in their hearts, helped to stamp on their 
minds the most fugitive details of that unique hour. There 
had not been the slightest shade of frivolity in Francesca’s 
conduct. It was noble, large, and without any second thought. 
This magnanimity struck Rodolphe greatly, for in it he recog- 
nized the difference between the Italian and the Frenchwoman. 
The waters, the land, the sky, the woman, all were grandiose 


” 


332 ALBERT SAVARON. 


and suave, even their love in the midst of this picture, so vast 
in its expanse, so rich in detail, where the sternness of the 
snowy peaks and their hard folds standing clearly out against 
the blue sky reminded Rodolphe of the circumstances which 
limited his happiness: a lovely country shut in by snows. 

This delightful intoxication of soul was destined to be 
disturbed. A boat was approaching from Lucerne; Gina, 
who had been watching it attentively, gave a joyful start, 
though faithful to her part as a mute. The bark came nearer; 
when at length Francesca could distinguish the faces on board, 
she exclaimed, ‘‘ Tito! ’’ as she perceived a young man. She 
stood up and remained standing at the risk of being drowned. 
‘*Tito! Tito!’’ cried she, impulsively waving her handker- 
chief. 

Tito desired the boatmen to slacken, and the two boats 
pulled side by side. The Italian and Tito talked with such 
extreme rapidity, and in a dialect unfamiliar toa man who 
hardly knew even the Italian of books, that Rodolphe could 
neither hear nor guess the drift of this conversation. But 
Tito’s handsome face, Francesca’s familiarity, and Gina’s 
expression of delight, ail aggrieved him. And indeed no lover 
can help being ill pleased at finding himself neglected for 
another, whoever he may be. Tito tossed a little leather bag 
to Gina, full of gold, no doubt, and a packet of letters to 
Francesca, who began to read them, with a farewell wave of 
the hand to Tito. 

‘¢Get quickly back to Gersau,’’ she said to the boatmen. 
“T will not let my poor Emilio pine ten minutes longer than 
he need.”’ 

‘What has happened ?’’ asked Rodolphe, as he saw Fran- 
cesca finish reading the last letter. | 

“¢ Liberty !’’ she exclaimed, with an artist’s enthusiasm. 

‘*And money,’’ added Gina, like an echo, for she had 
found her tongue. 

‘*Yes,’’ said Francesca, “‘no more poverty! For more 


ALBERT SAVARON., 333 


than eleven months have I been working, and I was beginning 
to betired of it. Iam certainly not a literary woman.”’ 

** Who is this Tito?’’ asked Rodolphe. 

«‘ The secretary of state to the financial department of the 
humble shop of the Colonnas, in other words the son of our 
ragionato. Poor boy! he could not come by the Saint-Goth- 
ard, nor by the Mont-Cenis, nor by the Simplon ; he came by 
sea, by Marseilles, and had to cross France. Well, in three 
weeks we shall be in Geneva, and living at our ease. Come, 
Rodolphe,’”’ she added, seeing sadness overspread the Paris- 
ian’s face, ‘‘is not the Lake of Geneva quite as good as the 
Lake of Lucerne?”’ 

«But allow me to bestow a regret on the Bergmanns’ de- 
lightful house,”’ said Rodolphe, pointing to the little pro- 
montory. 

**Come and dine with us to add to your associations, povero 
mio,’’ said she. ‘‘ This is a great day; we are out of danger. 
My mother writes that within a year there will be an amnesty. 
Oh! Ja cara patria /”’ 

These three words made Gina weep. ‘‘ Another winter 
here,’’ said she, ‘and I should have been dead ! ”’ 

‘* Poor little Sicilian kid!’’ said Francesca, stroking Gina’s 
head with an expression and an affection which made Ro- 
dolphe long to be so caressed, even if it were without love. 

The boat grounded; Rodolphe sprang on to the sand, 
offered his hand to the Italian lady, escorted her to the door 
of the Bergmanns’ house, and went to dress and return as soon 
as possible. 

When he joined the bookseller and his wife, who were sit- 
ting on the balcony, Rodolphe could scarcely repress an ex- 
clamation of surprise at seeing the prodigious change which 
the good news had produced in the old man. He now sawa 
man of about sixty, extremely well preserved, a lean Italian, 
as straight as an I, with hair still black though thin and show- 
ing a white skull, with bright eyes, a full set of white teeth, a 


334 ALBERT SAVARON. 


face like Cesar, and on his diplomatic lips a sardonic smile, 
the almost false smile under which a man of good breeding 
hides his real feelings. 

‘*Here is my husband under his natural form,’’ said Fran- 
cesca gravely. 

‘He is quite a new acquaintance,”’ replied Rodolphe, be- 
wildered. 

‘*Quite,”” said the bookseller; ‘‘I have played many a 
part, and know well how to make up. Ah! I played one in 
Paris under the Empire, with Bourrienne, Madame Murat, 
Madame d’Abrantis ¢ ¢u/fe guanti. Everything we take the 
trouble to learn in our youth, even the most futile, is of use. 
If my wife had not received a man’s education—an unheard-of 
thing in Italy—I should have been obliged to chop wood to 
get my living here. Povera Francesca! who would have told 
me that she would some day maintain me!”’ 

As he listened to this worthy bookseller, so easy, so affable, 
so hale, Rodolphe scented some mystification, and preserved 
the watchful silence of a man who has been duped. 

‘* Che avete, signor?’’ Francesca asked with simplicity. 
‘Does our happiness sadden you?”’ 

‘“Your husband is a young man,’’ he whispered in her ear. 

She broke into such a frank, infectious laugh that Rodolphe 
was still more puzzled. 

‘‘He is but sixty-five, at your service,’’ said she; ‘but I 
can assure you that even that is something—to be thankful 
for!’’ 

<*T do not like to hear you jest about an affection so sacred 
as this, of which you yourself prescribed the conditions.’’ 

“‘ Zitto /”’ said she, stamping her foot, and looking whether 
her husband were listening. . ‘‘ Never disturb the peace of 
mind of that dear man, as simple as a child, and with whom 
I can do what I please. He is under my protection,’’ she 
added. ‘‘If you could know with what generosity he risked 
his life and fortune because I was a Liberal! for he does not 


Me 


- kill my rival, but it would grieve the Diva too deeply. 


ALBERT SAVARON. 335 


share my political opinions. Is not that love, Monsieur 
Frenchman? But they are like that in his family. Emilio’s 
younger brother was deserted for a handsome youth by the 
woman he loved. He thrust his sword through his own heart 
ten minutes after he had said to his servant, ‘ I could of course 

This mixture of dignity and banter, of haughtiness and 
playfulness, made Francesca at this moment the most fascina- 
ting creature in the world. The dinner and the evening were 
full of cheerfulness, justified, indeed, by the relief of the two 
refugees, but depressing to Rodolphe. 

“¢Can she be fickle ?’’ he asked himself as he returned to 
the Stopfers’ house. ‘‘ She sympathized in my sorrow, and I 
cannot take part in her joy!”’ 

He blamed himself, justifying this girl-wife. 

‘*She has no taint of hypocrisy, and is carried away by 
impulse,’’ thought he, ‘‘ and I want her to be like a Parisian 
woman.’’ 


Next day and the following days—in fact, for twenty days 
after—Rodolphe spent all his time at the Bergmanns’, watch- 
ing Francesca without having determined to watch her. In 
some souls admiration is not independent of a certain pene- 
tration. The young Frenchman discerned in Francesca the 
imprudence of girlhood, the true nature of a woman as yet 
unbroken, sometimes struggling against her love, and at other 
moments yielding and carried away by it. The old man cer- 
tainly behaved to her as a father to his daughter, and Fran- 
cesca treated him with a deeply felt gratitude which roused 
her instinctive nobleness. The situation and the woman 
were to Rodolphe an impenetrable enigma, of which the solu- 
tion attracted him more and more. 

These last days were full of secret joys, alternating with 
melancholy moods, with tiffs and quarrels even more delight- 
ful than the hours when Rodolphe and Francesca were of one 


336 ALBERT SAVARON. 


mind. And he was more and more fascinated by this tender- 
ness apart from wit, always and in all things the same, an 
affection that was jealous of mere nothings—already ! 

‘* You care very much for luxury ?’’ said he one evening to 
Francesca, who was expressing her wish to get away from 
Gersau, where she missed many things. 

“*T!’’ cried she. ‘I love luxury as I love the arts, as I 
love a picture by Raphael, a fine horse, a beautiful day, or the 
Bay of Naples. Enmilio,’’ she went on, ‘‘ have I ever com- 
plained here during our days of privation ?’’ 

‘* You would not have been yourself if you had,”’ replied 
the old man gravely. 

‘« After all, is it not in the nature of plain folks to aspire to 
grandeur ?’’ she asked, with a mischievous glance at Ro- 
dolphe and at her husband. ‘*‘ Were my feet made for 
fatigue?’’ she added, putting out two pretty little feet. 
‘* My hands ’’—and she held one out to Rodolphe—‘“ were 
those hands made to work? Leave us,’’ she said to her hus- 
band ; ‘‘I want to speak to him.”’ 

The old man went into the drawing-room with sublime 
good faith; he was sure of his wife. 

‘*T will not have you come with us to Geneva,’’ she said to 
Rodolphe. ‘‘It is a gossiping town. Though I am far 
above the nonsense the world talks, I do not choose to be 
calumniated, not for my own sake, but for his. I make it 
my pride to be the glory of that old man, who is, after all, 
my only protector. We are leaving; stay here a few days. 
When you come on to Geneva, call first on my husband, and 
let him introduce you to me. Let us hide our great and 
unchangeable affection from the eyes of the world. I love 
you; you know it; but this is how I will prove it to you— 
you shall never discern in my conduct anything whatever 
that may arouse your jealousy.”’ 

She drew him into a corner of the balcony, kissed him on 
the forehead, and fled, leaving him in amazement. 


ALBERT SAVARON. 337 


Next day Rodolphe heard that the lodgers at the Berg- 
manns’ had left at daybreak. It then seemed to him intoler- 
able to remain at Gersau, and he set out for Vevay by the 
longest route, starting sooner than was necessary. Attracted 
to the waters of the lake where the beautiful Italian awaited 
him, he reached Geneva by the end of October. To avoid 
- the discomforts of the town he took rooms in a house at 
_ Eaux-Vives, outside the walls. As soon as he was settled, his 
first care was to ask his landlord, a retired jeweler, whether 
some Italian refugees from Milan had not lately come to 
reside at Geneva. 

** Not so far as I know,”’ replied the man. ‘‘ Prince and 
Princess Colonna of Rome have taken Monsieur Jeanrenaud’s 
place for three years; it is one of the finest on the lake. It 
is situated between the Villa Diodati and that of Monsieur 
Lafin-de-Dieu, let to the Vicomtesse de Beauséant. Prince 
Colonna has come to see his daughter and his son-in-law, 
Prince Gandolphini, a Neapolitan, or if you like, a Sicilian, 
an old adherent of King Murat’s, and a victim of the last 
revolution. These are the last arrivals at Geneva, and they 
are not Milanese. Serious steps had to be taken, and the 
pope’s interest in the Colonna family was invoked, to obtain 
permission from the foreign powers and the King of Naples 
for the Prince and Princesse Gandolphini to live here. Ge- 
neva is anxious to do nothing to displease the Holy Alliance to 
which it owes its independence. Ovr part is not to ruffle for- 
eign courts: there are many foreigners here, Russians and 
English.’’ ; 

«« Even some Genevese?”’ 

‘¢ Yes, monsieur, our lake is so fine ! Lord Byron lived here 
about seven years at the Villa Diodati, which every one goes 
to see now, like Coppet and Ferney.’’ 

‘You cannot tell me whether within a week or so a book- 
seller from Milan has come with his wife—named Lamporani, 


one of the leaders of the last revolution ?”’ 
22 


338 ALBERT SAVARON. 


‘I could easily find out by going to the Foreigners’ Club, 
said the jeweler. 

Rodolphe’s first walk was very naturally to the Villa Dio- 
dati, the residence of Lord Byron, whose recent death added 
to its attractiveness: for is not death the consecration of 
genius ? 

The road to Eaux-Vives follows the shore of the lake, and, 
like all the roads in Switzerland, is very narrow; in some 
spots, in consequence of the configuration of the hilly 
ground, there is scarcely space for two carriages to pass each 
other. 

At a few yards from the Jeanrenauds’ house, which he 
was approaching without knowing it, Rodolphe heard the 
sound of a carriage behind him, and, finding himself in a sunken 
road, he climbed to the top of a rock to leave the road free. 
Of course he looked at the approaching carriage—an elegant 
English phaeton, with a splendid pair of English horses. He 
felt quite dizzy as he beheld in this carriage Francesca, beau- 
tifully dressed, by the side of an old lady as hard as a cameo. 
A servant blazing with gold lace stood behind. Francesca 
recognized Rodolphe, and smiled at seeing him like a statue 
on a pedestal. The carriage, which the lover followed with 
his eyes as he climbed the hill, turned in at the gate ofa 
country house, towards which he ran. 

‘¢ Who lives here? ’’ he asked of the gardener. 

‘Prince and Princess Colonna, and Prince and Princess 
Gandolphini.’’ 

‘Have they not just driven in? ”’ 

‘¢ Yes, ‘sir.’’ 

In that instant a veil fell from Rodolphe’s eyes; he saw 
clearly the meaning of the past. 

“‘If only this is her last piece of trickery !’’ thought the - 
thunder-stricken lover to himself. 

He trembled lest he should have been the plaything of a 
whim, for he had heard what a cagriccio might mean in an 


ALBERT SAVARON. 339 


Italian. But what a crime had he committed in the eyes of a 
woman—in accepting a born princess as a citizen’s wife! in 
believing that a daughter of one of the most illustrious houses 
of the middle ages was the wife of a bookseller! The con- 
sciousness of his blunders increased Rodolphe’s desire to 
know whether he would be ignored and repelled. He asked 
for Prince Gandolphini, sending in his card, and was imme- 
diately received by the false Lamporani, who came forward 
to meet him, welcomed him with the best possible grace, and 
took him to walk on a terrace whence there was a view of 
Geneva, the Jura, the hills covered with villas, and below 
them a wide expanse of the lake. 

** My wife is faithful to the lakes, you see,’’ he remarked, 
after pointing out the details to his visitor. ‘* We have asort 
of concert this evening,’’ he added, as they returned to the 
splendid Villa Jeanrenaud. ‘‘I hope you will do me and the 
Princess the pleasure of seeing you. ‘Two months of poverty 
endured in intimacy are equal to years of friendship.’’ 

Though he was consumed by curiosity, Rodolphe dared not 
ask to see the Princess; he slowly made his way back to 
Eaux-Vives, looking forward to the evening. In a few hours 
his passion, great as it had already been, was augmented by 
his anxiety and by suspense as to future events. He now 
understood the necessity for making himself famous, that he 
might some day find himself, socially speaking, on a level 
with his idol. In his eyes Francesca was made really great 
by the simplicity and ease of her conduct at Gersau. Princess 
Colonna’s haughtiness, so evidently natural to her, alarmed 
Rodolphe, who would find enemies in Francesca’s father and 
mother—at least, so he might expect ; and the secrecy which 
Princess Gandolphini had so strictly enjoined on him now 
struck him as a wonderful proof of affection. By not choos- 
ing to compromise the future, had she not confessed that she 
loved him ? 

At last nine o’clock struck ; Rodolphe could get into a car- 


340 ALBERT SAVARON. 


riage and say with an emotion that is very intelligible, ** To 
the Villa Jeanrenaud—to Prince Gandolphini’s.’’ 

At last he saw Francesca, but without being seen by her. 
The Princess was standing quite near the piano. Her beauti- 
ful hair, so thick and long, was bound with a golden fillet. 
Her face, in the light of wax-candles, had the brilliant pallor 
peculiar to Italians, and which looks its best only by artificial 
light. She was in full evening dress, showing her fascinating 
shoulders, the figure of a girl and the arms of an antique 
statue. Her sublime beauty was beyond all possible rivalry, 
though there were some charming English and ‘Russian ladies 
present, the prettiest women of Geneva, and other Italians, 
among them the dazzling and illustrious Princess Varese, and 
the famous singer Tinti, who was at that moment engaged in 
singing. 

Rodolphe, leaning against the door-post, looked at the 
Princess, turning on her the fixed, tenacious, attracting gaze, 
charged with the full, insistent will which is concentrated in 
the feeling called desire, and thus assumes the nature of a 
vehement command. Did the flame of that gaze reach Fran- 
cesca? Was Francesca expecting each instant to see Rodolphe? 
In a few minutes she stole a glance at the door, as though 
magnetized by this current of love, and her eyes, without 
reserve, looked deep into Rodolphe’s. A slight thrill quiv- 
ered through that superb face and beautiful body; the shock 
to her spirit reacted: Francesca blushed! Rodolphe felt a 
whole life in this exchange of looks, so swift that it can only 
be compared to a lightning flash. But to what could his hap- 
piness compare? He was loved. The lofty Princess, in the 
midst of her world, in this handsome villa, kept the pledge 
given by the disguised exile, the capricious beauty of Berg- 
manns’ lodgings. The intoxication of such a moment enslaves 
aman for life! A faint smile, refined and subtle, candid and 
triumphant, curled Princess Gandolphini’s lips, and at a 
moment when she did not feel herself observed she looked at 


ALBERT SAVARON. 341 


Rodolphe with an expression which seemed to ask his pardon 
for having deceived him as to her rank. 

When the song was ended Rodolphe could make his way 
to the Prince, who graciously led him to his wife. Rodolphe 
went through the ceremonial of a formal introduction to 
Princess and Prince Colonna, and to Francesca. When this 
was over, the Princess had to take part in the famous quartette, 
Mi manca Ja voce, which was sung by her with Tinti, with the 
famous tenor Genovese, and with a well-known Italian prince 
then in exile, whose voice, if he had not been a prince, would 
have made him one of the princes of art. 

‘¢Take that seat,’’ said Francesca to Rodolphe, pointing 
to her own chair. ‘‘Osmé/ I think there is some mistake 
in my name; I have for the last minute been Princess Ro- 
dolphini.”’ 

It was said with an artless grace which revived, in this 
avowal hidden beneath a jest, the happy days at Gersau. 
Rodolphe reveled in the exquisite sensation of listening to 
the voice of the woman he adored, while sitting so close to 
her that one cheek was almost touched by the stuff of her 
dress and the gauze of her scarf. But when, at such a moment, 
Mi manca la voce is being sung, and by the finest voices in 
Italy, it is easy to understand what it was that brought the 
tears to Rodolphe’s eyes. 

In love, as perhaps in all else, there are certain circum- 
stances, trivial in themselves, but the outcome of a thousand 
little previous incidents, of which the importance is immense, as 
an epitome of the past and as a link with the future. A 
hundred times already we have felt the preciousness of the 
one we love; but a trifle—the perfect touch of two souls 
united during a walk perhaps by a single word, by some 
unlooked-for proof of affection—will carry the feeling to its 
supremest pitch. In short, to express this truth by an image 
which has been pre-eminently successful from the earliest ages 
of the world, there are in a long chain points of attachment 


342 ALBERT SAVARON. 


needed where the cohesion is stronger than in the intermediate 
loops of rings. This recognition between Rodolphe and 
Francesca, at this party, in the face of the world, was one of 
those intense moments which join the future to the past, and 
rivet a real attachment more deeply in the heart. It was 
perhaps of these incidental rivets that Bossuet spoke when he 
compared to them the rarity of happy moments in our lives— 
he who had such a living and secret experience of love. 

Next to the pleasure of admiring the woman we love comes 
that of seeing her admired by every one else. Rodolphe was 
enjoying both at once. Love is a treasury of memories, and 
though Rodolphe’s was already full, he added to it pearls of 
great price ; smiles shed aside for him alone, stolen glances, 
tones in her singing which Francesca addressed to him alone, 
but which made Tinti pale with jealousy, they were so much 
applauded. All his strength of desire, the special expression 
of his soul, was thrown over the beautiful Roman, who became 
unchangeably the beginning and the end of all his thoughts 
and actions. Rodolphe loved as every woman may dream of 
being loved, with a force, a constancy, a tenacity, which 
made Francesca the very substance of his heart; he felt her 
mingling with his blood as purer blood, with his soul asa 
more perfect soul; she would henceforth underlie the least 
efforts of his life as the golden sand of the Mediterranean lies 
beneath the waves. In short, Rodolphe’s lightest aspiration 
was now a living hope. 

At the end of a few days, Francesca understood this bound- 
less love ; but it was so natural, and so perfectly shared by 
her, that it did not surprise her. She was worthy of it. 

‘¢ What is there that is strange ?’’ said she to Rodolphe, as 
they walked on the garden terrace, when he had been betrayed 
into one of those outbursts of conceit which come so natur- 
ally to Frenchmen in the expression of their feelings—‘** what 
is extraordinary in the fact of your loving a young and beau- 
tiful woman, artist enough to be able to earn her living like 


ALBERT SAVARON. 343 


Tinti, and of giving you some of the pleasures of vanity? 
What lout but would then become an Amadis? This is not 
in question between you and me. What is needed is that we 
both love faithfully, persistently; at a distance from each 
other for years, with no satisfaction but that of knowing that 
we are loved.’’ 

*« Alas !’’ said Rodolphe, ‘‘ will you not consider my fidelity 
as devoid of all merit when you see me absorbed in the efforts 
of devouring ambition? Do you imagine that I can wish to 
see you one day exchange the fine name of Gandolphini for 
that of a man who isa nobody? I want to become one of the 
most remarkable men of my country, to be rich, great—that 
you may be as proud of my name as of your own name of 
Colonna.”’ 

**T should be grieved to see you without such sentiments in 
your heart,’ she replied, with a bewitching smile. ‘‘ But donot 
wear yourself out too soon in your ambitious labors. Remain 
young. They say that politics soon make a man old.” 

One of the rarest gifts in women is a certain gaiety which 
does not detract from tenderness. ‘This combination of deep 
feeling with the lightness of youth added an enchanting grace 
at this moment to Francesca’s charms. This is the key to her 
character ; she laughs and she is touched ; she becomes enthu- 
siastic, and returns to arch raillery with a readiness, a facility, 
which make her the charming and exquisite creature she is, 
and for which her reputation is known outside Italy. Under 
the graces of a woman she conceals vast learning, thanks to 
the excessively monotonous and almost monastic life she led 
in the castle of the old Colonnas. 

This rich heiress was at first intended for the cloister, being 
the fourth child of Prince and Princess Colonna; but the 
death of her two brothers, and of her elder sister, suddenly 
brought her out of her retirement, and made her one of the 
most brilliant matches in the papal states. Her elder sister 
had been betrothed to Prince Gandolphini, one of the richest 


344 ALBERT SAVARON. 


landowners in Sicily; and Francesca was married to him 
instead, so that nothing might be changed in the position of 
the family. The Colonnas and Gandolphinis had always 
intermarried, 

From the age of nine till she was sixteen, Francesca, under 
the direction of a cardinal of the family, had read all through 
the library of the Colonnas, to make weight against her ardent 
imagination by studying science, art, and letters. But in these 
studies she acquired the taste for independence and liberal 
ideas, which threw her, with her husband, into the ranks of 
the revolution. Rodolphe had not yet learned that, besides 
five living languages, Francesca knew Greek, Latin, and 
Hebrew. The charming creature perfectly understood that, 
for a woman, the first condition of being learned is to keep 
it deeply hidden. 

Rodolphe spent the whole winter at Geneva. This winter 
passed like a day. When spring returned, notwithstanding 
the infinite delights of the society of a clever woman, 
wonderfully well informed, young and lovely, the lover went 
through cruel sufferings, endured indeed with courage, but 
which were sometimes legible in his countenance, and be- 
trayed themselves in his manners or speech, perhaps because 
he believed that Francesca shared them. Now and again it 
annoyed him to admire her calmness. Like an English- 
woman, she seemed to pride herself on expressing nothing 
in her face; its serenity defied love; he longed to see her 
agitated ; he accused her of having no feeling, for he believed 
in the tradition which ascribes to Italian women a feverish 
excitability. 

‘IT am a Roman!’’ Francesca gravely replied one day 
when she took quite seriously some banter on this subject from 
Rodolphe. 

There was a depth of tone in her reply which gave it the 
appearance of scathing irony, and which set Rodolphe’s 
pulses throbbing. The month of May spread before them the 


ALBERT SAVARON,. 345 


treasures of her fresh verdure; the sun was sometimes as 
powerful as at midsummer. The two lovers happened to be 
at a part of the terrace where the rock rises abruptly from 
the lake, and where leaning over the stone parapet that 
crowns the wall above a flight of steps leading down to a 
landing-stage. From the neighboring villa, where there is a 
similar stairway, a boat presently shot out like a swan, its flag 
flaming, its crimson awning spread over a lovely woman com- 
fortably reclining on red cushions, her hair wreathed with real 
flowers ; the boatman was a young man dressed like a sailor, 
and rowing with all the more grace because he was under the 
lady’s eye. 

“‘ They are happy!’’ exclaimed Rodolphe, with bitter em- 
phasis. ‘‘ Claire de Bourgogne, the last survivor of the only 
house which could ever vie with the royal family of France + 

‘Oh! ofa bastard branch, and that a female line.’’ 

«¢ At any rate, she is Vicomtesse de Beauséant ; and she did 
not——”’ 

**Did not hesitate, you would say, to bury herself here 
with Monsieur Gaston de Nueil,’’ replied the daughter of the 
Colonnas. ‘‘ She is only a Frenchwoman; I am an Italian, 
my dear sir!”’ 

Francesca turned away from the parapet, leaving Rodolphe, 
and went to the farther end of the terrace, whence there is a 
wide prospect of the lake. Watching her as she slowly walked 
away? Rodolphe suspected that he had wounded her soul, at 
once so simple and so wise, so proud and so humble. It 
turned him cold ; he followed Francesca, who signed to him 
to leave her to herself. But he did not heed the warning, 
and detected her wiping away her tears. Tears! in so strong 
a nature. 

‘« Francesca,’ said he, taking her hand, “ is there a single 
regret in your heart?’”’ 

She was silent, disengaged her hand which held her em- 
broidered handkerchief, and again dried her eyes. 





346 ALBERT SAVARON. 


‘‘ Forgive me!’’ he said. And with a rush, he kissed her 
eyes to wipe away the tears. 

Francesca did not seem aware of his passionate impulse, she 
was so violently agitated. Rodolphe, thinking she consented, 
grew bolder; he put his arm round her, clasped her to his 
heart, and snatched a kiss. But she freed herself by a dig- 
nified movement of offended modesty, and, standing a yard 
off, she looked at him without anger, but with firm deter- 
mination. 

‘‘Go this evening,’’ she said. ‘* We meet no more till we 
meet at Naples.’’ 

The order was stern, but it was obeyed, for it was Fran- 
cesca’s will. 


On his return to Paris, Rodolphe found in his rooms a por- 
trait of Princess Gandolphini painted by Schinner, as Schinner 
can paint. ‘The artist had passed through Geneva on his way 
to Italy. As he had positively refused to paint the portraits 
of several women, Rodolphe did not believe that the Prince, 
anxious as he was for a portrait of his wife, would be able to 
conquer the great painter’s objections; but Francesca, no 
doubt, had bewitched him, and obtained from him—which 
was almost a miracle—an original portrait for Rodolphe, and 
a duplicate for Emilio. She told him this in a charming and 
delightful letter, in which the mind indemnified itself for the 
reserve required by the worship of the proprieties. Thé lover 
replied. Thus began, never to cease, a’ regular correspond- 
ence between Rodolphe and Francesca, and which was the 
only indulgence that they allowed themselves throGgh the 
many years following. 

Rodolphe, possessed by an ambition sanctified by his love, 
set to work. First he longed to make his fortune, and risked 
his all in an undertaking to which he devoted all his faculties 
as well as his capital ; but he, an inexperienced youth, had to 
contend against duplicity, which won the day. Thus three 


ALBERT SAVARON. 347 


years were lost in a vast enterprise, three years of struggling 
and courage. 

The Villéle ministry fell just when Rodolphe was ruined. 
The valiant lover thought he would seek in politics what com- 
mercial industry had refused him; but before braving the 
storms of this career, he went, all wounded and sick at heart, 
to have his bruises healed and his courage revived at Naples, 
where the Prince and Princess had been reinstated in their 
place and rights on the King’s accession. This, in the midst 
of his warfare, was a respite full of delights; he spent three 
months at the Villa Gandolphini, rocked in hope. 

Rodolphe then began again to construct his fortune. His 
talents were already known; he was about to attain the de- 
sires of his ambitions; a high position was promised him as 
the reward of his zeal, his devotion, and his past services, when 
the storm of July, 1830, broke, and again his bark was swamped. 

She, and God! These are the only witnesses of the brave 
efforts, the daring attempts of a young man gifted with fine 
qualities, but to whom, so far, the protection of luck—the god 
of fools—has been denied. And this indefatigable wrestler, 
upheld by love, comes back to fresh struggles, lighted on his 

“way by an always friendly eye, an ever-faithful heart. 

Lovers! Pray for him! 





As she finished this narrative, Mademoiselle de Watteville’s 
cheeks were on fire; there was a fever in her blood. She was 
crying—but with rage. This little novel, inspired by the 
literary style then in fashion, was the first reading of the kind 
that Rosalie had ever had the chance of devouring. Love 
was depicted in it, if not by a master-hand, at any rate bya 
man who seemed to give his own impressions; and truth, 
even if unskilled, could not fail to touch a virgin soul. Here 
lay the secret of Rosalie’s terrible agitation, of her fever and 
her tears; she was jealous of Francesca Colonna, 


348 ALBERT SAVARON. 


She never for an instant doubted the sincerity of this 
poetical flight ; Albert had taken pleasure in telling the story 
of his passion, while changing the names of persons and per- 
haps of places. Rosalie was possessed by infernal curiosity. 
What woman but would, like her, have wanted to know her 
rival’s name—for she too loved! As she read these pages, to 
her really contagious, she had said solemnly to herself, ‘I 
' love him!’’ She loved Albert, and felt in her heart a gnaw- 
ing desire to fight for him, to snatch him from this unknown 
rival. She reflected that she knew nothing of music, and 
that she was not beautiful. 

“He will never love me!”’ thought she. 

This conclusion aggravated her anxiety to know whether 
she might not be mistaken, whether Albert really loved an 
Italian princess, and was loved by her. In the course of this 
fateful night, the power of swift decision, which had charac- 
terized the famous Watteville, was fully developed in his 
descendant. She devised those whimsical schemes, round 
which hovers the imagination of most young girls when, in 
the solitude to which some injudicious mothers confine them, 
they are aroused by some tremendous event which the system 
of repression to which they are subjected could neither foresee 
nor prevent. She dreamed of descending by a ladder from 
the kiosk into the garden of the house occupied by Albert ; 
of taking advantage of the lawyer being asleep to look 
through the window into his private room. She thought of 
writing to him, or of bursting the fetters of Besangon society 
by introducing Albert to the drawing-room of the Hétel de 
Rupt. This enterprise, which to the Abbé de Grancey even 
would have seemed the climax of the impossible, was a mere 
passing thought. 

“Ah!” said she to herself, ‘ my father has a dispute pend- 
ing as to his land at les Rouxey. I will go there! If there 
is no lawsuit, I will manage to make one, and he shall come 
into our drawing-room !’’ she cried, as she sprang out of bed 


ALBERT SAVARON. 349 


and to the window to look at the fascinating gleam which 
shone through Albert’s lights. The clock struck one; he was 
still asleep. 

**T shall see him when he gets up ; iubinioe he will come to 
his window.’’ 

At this instant Mademoiselle de Watteville was witness to 
an incident which promised to place in her power the means 
of knowing Albert’s secrets. By the light of the moon she 
saw a pair of arms stretched out from the kiosk to help Jéréme, 
Albert’s servant, to get across the coping of the wall and step 
into the little building. In Jéréme’s accomplice Rosalie at 
once recognized Mariette the lady’s maid. 

‘* Mariette and Jéréme!”’ said she to herself. ‘* Mariette, 
such an ugly girl! Certainly they must be ashamed of them- 
selves.’’ 

Though Mariette was horribly ugly and six-and-thirty, she 
had inherited several plots of land.. She had been seventeen 
years with Madame de Watteville, who valued her highly for 
her bigotry, her honesty, and long service, and she had no 
doubt saved money and invested her wages and perquisites. 
Hence, earning about ten louis a year, she probably had by 
this time, including compound interest and her little inherit- 
ance, not less than ten thousand francs. 

In Jér6éme’s eyes ten thousand francs could alter the laws of 
optics; he saw in Mariette a neat figure ; he did not perceive 
the pits and seams which virulent smallpox had left on her 
flat, parched face; to him the crooked mouth was straight ; 
and ever since Savaron, by taking him ‘into his service, had 
brought him so near to the Wattevilles’ house, he had laid 
siege systematically to the maid, who was as prim and sancti- 
monious as her mistress, and who, like every ugly old maid, 
was far more exacting than the handsomest. 

If the night-scene in the kiosk is thus fully accounted for to 
all perspicacious readers, it was not so to Rosalie, though she 
derived from it the most dangerous lesson that can be given, 


350 ALBERT SAVARON. 


that of a bad example. A mother brings her daughter up 
strictly, keeps her under her wing for seventeen years, and 
then, in one hour, a servant-girl destroys the long and painful 
work, sometimes by a word, often indeed by a gesture! 
Rosalie got into bed again, not without considering how she 
might take advantage of her discovery. 

Next morning, as she went to mass accompanied by Mariette 
—her mother was not well—Rosalie took the maid’s arm, 
which surprised the country wench not a little. 

‘* Mariette,’’ said she, ‘‘is Jéréme in his master’s confi- 
dence? ’”’ 

**T do not know, mademoiselle.”’ 

‘*Do not play the innocent with me,’’ said Mademoiselle 
de Watteville drily. ‘‘ You let him kiss you last night under 
the kiosk; I no longer wonder that you so warmly approved 
of my mother’s ideas for the improvements she planned.’’ 

Rosalie could feel how Mariette was trembling by the shak- 
ing of her arm. 

‘‘IT wish you no ill,’’ Rosalie went on. ‘‘ Be quite easy; 
I shall not say a word to my mother, and you can meet 
Jéréme as often as you please.’’ 

‘‘But, mademoiselle,’’ replied Mariette, ‘‘it is perfectly 
respectable; Jéréme honestly means to marry me——”’ 

‘* But then,’’ said Rosalie, ‘‘ why meet at night ?”’ 

Mariette was completely dumfounded, and could make no 
reply. 

‘¢ Listen, Mariette; I am in love too! In secret and with- 
out any return. I am, after all, my father’s and mother’s 
only child. You have more to hope for from me than from 
any one else in the world if 

‘* Certainly, mademoiselle, and you may count on us for life 
or death,’’ exclaimed Mariette, rejoiced at the unexpected 
turn of affairs. 

‘In the first place, silence for silence,’’ said Rosalie. ‘I 
will not marry Monsieur de Soulas; but one thing I will have, 





eS eo. ee 


ALBERT SAVARON. , 351 


and must have ; my help and favor are yours on one condition 


only.’’ 
‘¢ What is that ?’’ 
_‘**JT must see the letters which Monsieur Savaron sends to 
the post by Jéréme.”’ 
‘«* But what for?’’ said Mariette in alarm. 
‘*Oh! merely to read them, and you yourself shall post 


them afterwards. It will cause a little delay; that is all.’ 


At this moment they went into church, and each of them, 
instead of reading the order of mass, fell into her own train 
of thought. 

*¢ Dear, dear, how many sins are there in all that ?’’ thought 
Mariette. : 

Rosalie, whose soul, brain, and heart were completely 
upset by reading the story, by this time regarded it as 
history, written for her rival. By dint of thinking of noth- 
ing else, like a child, she ended by believing that the 
Lastern Review was no doubt forwarded to Albert’s lady- 
love. 

**Oh!”’ said she to herself, her head buried in her hands 
in the attitude of a person lost in prayer; “Oh! how can I 
get my father to look through the list of people to whom the 
Review is sent ?”’ 

After breakfast she took a turn in the garden with her 
father, coaxing and cajoling him, and brought him to the 
kiosk. 

“Do you suppose, my dear little papa, that our Review is 


~ ever read abroad ?’’ 


**It is but just started as 

** Well, I will wager that it is,’’ 

**Tt is hardly possible.’’ 

‘Just go and find out, and note the names of any sub- 
scribers out of France.’’ 

Two hours later Monsieur de Watteville said to his 
daughter— 





352 ALBERT SAVARON. 


‘‘T was right; there is not one foreign subscriber as yet. 
They hope to get some at Neufchatel, at Berne, and at 
Geneva. One copy is, in fact, sent to Italy, but it is not 
paid for—to a Milanese lady at her country house at Bel- 
girate, on Lago Maggiore.”’ 

‘¢ What is her name ?”’ 

“« The Duchesse d’ Argaiolo.”’ 

“* Do you know her, papa?’”’ 

‘‘T have heard about her. She was by birth a Princess 
Soderini, a Florentine, a very great lady, and quite as rich as 
her husband, who has one of the largest fortunes in Lom- 
bardy. Their villa on the Lago Maggiore is one of the sights 
of Italy.’ 

Two days after, Mariette placed the following letter in 
Mademoiselle de Watteville’s hands: 


Albert Savaron to Léopold Hannequin. 


VEN, tis so, my dear friend; I am at Besancon, while 
you thought I was traveling. I would not tell you anything 
till success should begin, and now it is dawning. Yes, my 
dear Léopold, after so many abortive undertakings, over 
which I have shed the best of my blood, have wasted so many 
efforts, spent so much courage, I have made up my mind to 
do as you have done—to start on a beaten path, on the high- 
road, as the longest but the safest. I can see you jump with 
surprise in your lawyer’s chair ! 

‘*But do not suppose that anything is changed in my per- 
sonal life, of which you alone in the world know the secret, 
and that under the reservations se insists on. I did not tell 
you, my friend; but I was horribly weary of Paris. The 
outcome of the first enterprise,on which I had founded all 
my hopes, and which came to a bad end in consequence of 
the utter rascality of my two partners, who combined to cheat 
and fleece me—me, though everything was done by my energy 


ALBERT SAVARON. 353 


—made me give up the pursuit of a fortune after the loss of 
three years of my life. One of these years was spent in the 
law courts, and perhaps I should have come worse out of the 
scrape if I had not been made to study law when I was 
twenty. 

‘I made up my mind to go into politics solely, to the 
end that I may some day find my name in a list for promo- 
tion to the Senate under the title of Comte Albert Savaron 
de Savarus, and so revive in France a good name now extinct 
in Belgium—though indeed I am neither legitimate nor legit- 
imized.”’ 

“Ah! I knew it! He is of noble birth!’’ exclaimed 
Rosalie, dropping the letter. 

**You know how conscientiously I studied, how faithful 
and useful I was as an obscure journalist, and how excellent 
a secretary to the statesman who, on his part, was true to me 
in 1829. Flung to the depths once more by the revolution 
of July, just when my name was becoming known, at the very 
moment when, as master of appeals, I was about to find my 
place as a necessary wheel in the political machine, I com- 
mitted the blunder of remaining faithful to the fallen, and 
fighting for them, without them. Oh! why was I but three- 
and-thirty, and why did I not apply to you to make me 
eligible? I concealed from you all my devotedness and my 
dangers. What would you have? I was full of faith. We 
should not have agreed. 

*¢Ten months ago, when you saw me so gay and contented, 
writing my political articles, I was in despair; I foresaw my 
fate, at the age of thirty-seven, with two thousand francs for 
my whole fortune, without the smallest fame, just having, 
‘failed in a noble undertaking, the founding, namely, of a 
daily paper, answering only to a need of the future instead of 
appealing to the passions of the moment. I did not know 
which way to turn, and I felt my own value! I wandered 
about, gloomy and hurt, through the lonely places of Paris— 

. 


354 ALBERT SAVARON. 


Paris which had slipped through my fingers—thinking of my 
crushed ambitions, but never giving them up. Oh, what 
frantic letters I wrote at that time to her, my second con- 
science, my other self! Sometimes, I would say to myself, 
‘Why did I sketch so vast a programme of life? Why 
demand everything? Why not wait for happiness while 
devoting myself to some mechanical employment.’ 

' “T then looked about me for some modest appointment by 
which I might live. I was about to get the editorship of a 
paper under a manager who did not know much about it, a 
man of wealth and ambition, when I took fright. ‘ Would 
she ever accept as her husband a man who had stooped so 
low ?’ I wondered. 

‘* This reflection made me two-and-twenty again. But, oh, 
my dear Léopold, how the soul is worn by these perplexities ! 
What must not caged eagles suffer, and imprisoned lions! 
They suffer what Napoleon suffered, not at Saint Helena, but 
on the Quay of the Tuileries, on the roth of August, when 
he saw Louis XVI. defending himself so badly while he could 
have quelled the insurrection ; as he actually did, on the same 
spot, a little later, in Vendémiaire. Well, my life has been 
a torment of that kind, extending over four years. How 
many a speech to the Chamber have I not delivered in the 
deserted alleys of the Bois de Boulogne! These wasted 
harangues have at any rate sharpened my tongue and accus- 
tomed my mind to formulate its ideas in words. And while 
I was undergoing this secret torture, you were getting married, 
you had paid for your business, you were made law-clerk to 
the mayor of your district, after gaining the cross for a wound 
at Saint-Merri. . 

** Now, listen. When I was a small boy and tortured cock- 
chafers, the poor insects had one form of struggle which used 
almost to put me in a fever. It was when I saw them making 
repeated efforts to fly but without getting away, though they 
could spread their wings. We used to say, ‘ They are mark- 


ALBERT SAVARON. 355 


ing time.’ Now, was this sympathy? Was it a vision of my 
own future? Oh! to spread my wings and yet be unable to 
fly! That has been my predicament since that fine under- 
- taking by which I was disgusted, but which has now made 
four families rich. 

‘* At last, seven months ago, I determined to make myself 
a name at the Paris bar, seeing how many vacancies had been 
left by the promotion of several lawyers to eminent positions. 
But when I remembered the rivalry I had seen among men of 
the press, and how difficult it is to achieve anything of any 
kind in Paris, the arena where so many champions meet, I 
came to a determination painful to myself, but certain in its 
results, and perhaps quicker than anyother. In the course of 
our conversations you had given me a picture of the society 
of Besancon, of the impossibility for a stranger to get on 
there, to produce the smallest effect, to get into society, or to 
succeed in any way whatever. It was there that I determined 
to set up my flag, thinking, and rightly, that I should meet 
with no opposition, but find myself alone to canvass for the 
election. The people of the Comté will not meet the out- 
sider? The outsider will not meet them! They refuse to 
admit him to their drawing-rooms, he will never go there! 
He never shows himself anywhere, not even in the streets! 
But there is one class that elects the deputies—the commercial 
class. I am going especially to study commercial questions, 
“with which I am already familiar ; I will gain their lawsuits, 
I will effect compromises, I will be the greatest pleader in 
Besancon. By-and-by I will start a Review, in which I will 
defend the interests of the country, will create them, or pre- 
serve them, or resuscitate them. When [| shall have won a 
sufficient number of votes, my name wil] come out of the urn. 
For a long time the unknown barrister will be treated with 
contempt, but some circumstance will arise to bring him to 
the front—some unpaid defense, or a case which no other 
pleader will undertake. 


356 ALBERT SAVARON. 


‘* Well, my dear Léopold, I packed up my books in eleven 
cases, I bought such law-books as might prove useful, and I 
sent everything off, furniture and all, by carrier to Besancon. 
I collected my diplomas, and I went to bid you good-bye. 
The mail-coach dropped me at Besancon, where, in three 
days’ time, I chose a little set of rooms looking out over some 
gardens. I sumptuously arranged the mysterious private room 
where I spend my nights and days, and where the portrait of 
my divinity reigns—of her to whom my life is dedicated, who 
fills it wholly, who is the mainspring of my efforts, the secret 
of my courage, the cause of my talents. Then, as soon as the 
furniture and books had come, I engaged an intelligent man- 
servant, and there I sat for five months like a hibernating 
marmot. 

‘* My name had, however, been entered on the list of law- 
yers in the town. At last I was called one day to defend an 
unhappy wretch at the assizes, no doubt in order to hear me 
speak for once! One of the most influential merchants of 
Besancon was on the jury; he had a difficult task to fulfill; I 
did my utmost for the man, and my success wds absolute and 
complete. My client was innocent; I very dramatically se- 
cured the arrest of the real criminals, who had come forward 
as witnesses. In short, the court and the public were united 
in their admiration. I managed to save the examining magis- 
trate’s pride by pointing out the impossibility of detecting a 
plot so skillfully planned. 

‘¢ Then I had to fight a case for my merchant, and won his 
suit. The Cathedral Chapter next chose me to defend a tre- 
mendous action against the town, which had been going on 
for four years; I won that. Thus after three trials, I had be- 
come the most famous advocate of Franche-Comté. 

‘«« But I bury my life in the deepest mystery, and so hide 
my aims. I have adopted habits which prevent my accepting 
any invitations. I am only to be consulted between six and 
eight in the morning ; I go to bed after my dinner, and work 


Ts) ee 


ALBERT SAVARON. 357 


at night. The vicar-general, a man of parts, and very influen- 
tial, who placed the chapter’s case in my hands after they 
had lost it in the lower court, of course professed their grati- 
tude. ‘Monsieur,’ said I, ‘I will win your suit, but I want 
no fee; I want more’ (start of alarm on the abbé’s part). 
‘You must know that I am a great loser by putting myself 
forward in antagonism to the town. I came here only to 
leave the place as deputy. I mean to engage only in com- 
mercial cases, because commercial men return the members ; 
they will distrust me if I defend ‘‘ the priests’’—for to them 
you are simply the priests. If I undertake your defense, it is 
because I was, in 1828, private secretary to such a minister’ 
(again a start of surprise on the part of my abbé), ‘and mas- 
ter of appeals, under the name of Albert de Savarus’ (an- 
other start). ‘Ihave remained faithful to monarchical opin- 
ions ; but, as you have not the majority of votes in Besangon, 
I must gain votes among the citizens. So the fee I ask of you 
is the votes you may be able secretly to secure for me at the 
opportune moment. Let us each keep our own counsel, and 
I will defend, for nothing, every case to which a priest of this 
diocese may be a party. Not aword about my previous life, 
and we will be true to each other.’ 

‘*When he came to thank me afterwards, he gave me a 
note for five hundred francs, and said in my ear, ‘ The votes 
are a bargain all the same.’ I have in the course of five 
interviews made a friend, I think, of this vicar-general. 

“‘ Now I am overwhelmed with business, and I understand 
no cases but those brought me by merchants, saying that com- 
mercial questions are my specialty. This line of conduct 
attaches business men to me, and allows me to make friends 
with influential persons. So all goes well. Within a few 
months I shall have found a house to purchase in Besancon, 
so as to secure a qualification. I count on your lending me 
the necessary capital for this investment. If I should die, if 
I should fail, the loss would be too small to be any considera- 


358 ALBERT SAVARON. 


tion between youand me. You will get the interest out of 
the rental, and I shall take good care to lookout for some- 
thing cheap, so that you may lose nothing by this mortgage, 
which is indispensable. . 

‘©Oh! my dear Léopold, no gambler with the last remains 
of his fortune in his pocket, bent on staking it at the Cercle 
des Etrangers for the last time one night, when he must come 
away rich or ruined, ever felt such a perpetual ringing in his 
ears, such a nervous moisture on his palms, such a fevered 
tumult in his brain, such inward qualms in his body as I go 
through every day now that I am playing my last card in the 
game of ambition. Alas! my dear and only friend, for 
nearly ten years now have I been struggling. This battle 
with men and things, in which I have unceasingly poured out 
my strength and energy, and so constantly worn the springs 
of desire, has, so to speak, undermined my vitality. With 
all the appearance of a strong man of good health, I feel 
myself a wreck. Every day carries with it ashred of my in- 
most life. At every fresh effort I feel that I should never be 
able to begin again. I have no power, no vigor left but for 
happiness ; and if it should never come to crown my head 
with roses, the me that is really me would cease to exist, I 
should be a ruined thing. I should wish for nothing more in 
the world. I should want to cease from living. You know 
that power and fame, the vast moral empire that I crave, is. 
but secondary; it is to me only a means to happiness, the 
pedestal for my idol. 

‘©To reach the goal and die, like the runner of antiquity! 
To see fortune and death stand on the threshold hand in 
hand! To win the beloved woman just when love is extinct! 
To lose the faculty of enjoyment after earning the right to be 
happy! Of how many men has this been the fate! 

‘¢ But there surely is a moment when Tantalus rebels, crosses 
his arms, and defies hell, throwing up his part of the eternal 
dupe. That is what I shall come to if anything should thwart 


ALBERT SAVARON. 359 


my plan ; if, after stooping to the dust of provincial life, prowl- 
ing like a starving tiger round these tradesmen, these electors, 
to secure their votes; if, after wrangling in these squalid 
cases, and giving them my time—the time I might have spent 
on Lago Maggiore, seeing the waters she sees, basking in her 
gaze, hearing her voice—if, after all, I failed to scale the 
tribune and conquer the glory that should surround the name 
that is to succeed to that of Argaiolo! Nay, more than this, 
Léopold ; there are days when I feel a heavy languor; deep 
disgust surges up from the depths of my soul, especially when, 
abandoned to long day-dreams, I have lost myself in anticipa- 
tion of the joys of blissful love! May it not be that our de- 
sire has only a certain modicum of power, and that it perishes, 
perhaps, of a too lavish effusion of its essence? For, after 
all, at this present, my life is fair, illuminated by faith, work, 
and love. 

«¢ Farewell, my friend; I send love to your children, and 
beg you to remember me to your excellent wife. Yours, 

‘¢ ALBERT.”’ 


Rosalie read this letter twice through, and its general purport 
was stamped on her heart. She suddenly saw the whole of 
Albert’s previous existence, for her quick intelligence threw 
light on all the details, and enabled her to take it all in. By 
adding this information to the little novel published in the 
Review, she now fully understood Albert. Of course, she 
exaggerated the greatness, remarkable as it was, of this lofty 
soul and potent will, and her love for Albert thenceforth 
became a passion, its violence enhanced by all the strength of 
her youth, the weariness of her solitude, and the unspent 
energy of her character. Love is in a young girl the effect 
of a naturallaw; but when her craving for affection is centred 
in an exceptional man, it is mingled with the enthusiasm 
which overflows in a youthful heart. ‘Thus Mademoiselle de 
Watteville had in a few days reached a morbid and very 


360 ALBERT SAVARON. 


dangerous stage of enamored infatuation. The Baroness was 
much pleased with her daughter, who, being under the spell 
of her absorbing thoughts, never resisted her will, seemed to 
be devoted to feminine occupations, and realized her mother’s 
ideal of a docile daughter. 

The lawyer was now engaged in court two or three times a 
week. Though he was overwhelmed with business he found 
time to attend the trials, call on litigious merchants, and 
conduct the Review, keeping up his personal mystery, 
from the conviction that the more covert and hidden was his 
influence, the more real it would be. But he neglected no 
means of success, reading up the list of electors of Besangon, 
and finding out their interests, their characters, their various 
friendships and antipathies. Did ever a cardinal hoping to 
be made pope give himself more trouble ? 

One evening Mariette, on coming to dress Rosalie for an 
evening party, handed to her, not without many groans over this 
treachery, a letter of which the address made Mademoiselle 
de Watteville shiver and redden and turn pale again as she 
read the address : 


Zo Madame la Duchesse & Argaiolo 
(née Princesse Soderint), 
At Belgirate, 
Lago Maggiore, Italy. 


In her eyes this direction blazed as the words Mene, Mene, 
Tekel, Upharsin, did in the eyes of Belshazzar. After concealing 
the letter, Rosalie went downstairs to accompany her mother 
to Madame de Chavoncourt’s; and as long as the endless 
evening lasted, she was tormented by remorse and scruples. 
She had already felt shame at having violated the secrecy of 
Albert’s letter to Léopold ; she had several times asked her- 
self whether, if he knew of her crime, infamous inasmuch as- 
it necessarily goes unpunished, the high-minded Albert could 


ALBERT SAVARON. 361 


esteem her. Her conscience answered an uncompromising 
No** 

She had expiated her sin by self-imposed penances ; she 
fasted ; she mortified herself by remaining on her knees, her 
arms outstretched for hours, and repeating prayers all the time. 
She had compelled Mariette to similar acts of repentance ; her 
passion was mingled with genuine asceticism, and was all the 
more dangerous. 

‘«Shall I read that letter, shall I not?’’ she asked herself, 
while listening to the Chavoncourt girls. One was sixteen, 
the other seventeen and a half. Rosalie looked upon her two 
friends as mere children because they were not secretly in love. 
‘© Tf I read it,’’ she finally decided, after hesitating for an hour 
between yes and no, “it shall, at any rate, be the last. Since 
I have gone so far as to see what he wrote to his friend, why 
should I not know what he says to fer? If it isa horrible 
crime, is it not a proof of love? Oh, Albert! amI not your. 
love ?”” 

When Rosalie was in bed she opened the letter, dated from 
day to day, so as to give the Duchess a faithful picture of 
Albert’s life and feelings. 

“ 20th. 

*¢ My dear Soul, all is well. To my other conquests I have 
just added an invaluable one: I have done a service to one of 
the most influential men who work the elections. Like the 
critics, who make other men’s reputations but can never make 
their own, he makes deputies though he can never become one. 
The worthy man wanted to show his gratitude without loosen- 
ing his purse-strings by saying to me, ‘ Would you care to sit 
in the Chamber? I can get you returned as deputy.’ 

*«<Tf I ever made up my mind to enter on a political 
career,’ replied I hypocritically, ‘it would be to devote: 
myself to the Comté, which I love, and where I am appre- 
ciated.’ 

*¢ Well,’ he said, ‘ we will persuade you, and through you 


362 ALBERT SAVARON. 


we shall have weight in the Chamber, for you will distinguish 
yourself there.’ 

** And so, my beloved angel, say what you will, my perse- 
verance will be rewarded. Ere long I shall, from the high- 
place of the French Tribune, come before my country, before 
Europe. My name will be flung to you by the hundred voices 
of the French press. 

‘Yes, as you tell me, I was old when I came to Besancon, 
and Besangon has aged me more ; but, like Sixtus V., I shall 
be young again the day after my election. I shall enter on 
my true life, my own sphere. Shall we not then stand in the 
same line? Count Savaron de Savarus, ambassador I know 
not where, may surely marry a Princess Soderini, the widow 
of the Duc d’Argaiolo! Triumph restores the youth of men 
who have been preserved by incessant struggles. Oh, my 
Life! with what gladness did I fly from my library to my 
private room, to tell your portrait of this progress before 
writing to you! Yes, the votes I can command, those of 
the vicar-general, of the persons I can oblige, and of this 
client, make my election already sure. 

“ 26th. 

‘*We have entered on the twelfth year since that blest 
evening when, by a look, the beautiful Duchess sealed the 
promises made by the exile Francesca. You, dear, are thirty- 
two, I am thirty-five; the dear Duke is seventy-seven—that is 
to say, ten years more than yours and mine put together, and 
he still keeps well! My patience is almost as great as my 
love, and indeed I need a few years yet to rise to the level of 
your name. As you see, I amin good spirits to-day, I can 
laugh ; that is the effect of hope. Sadness or gladness, it all 
comes to me through you. The hope of success always carries 
me back to the day following that on which I saw you for 
the first time, when my life became one with yours as the 
earth turns to the light. Qual panto are these eleven years, 
for this is the 26th of December, the anniversary of my arrival 


ALBERT SAVARON. 363 


at your villa on the Lake of Geneva. For eleven years have I 
been crying to you, while you shine like a star set too high 
for man to reach it. 
“27th, 
“No, dearest, do not go to Milan; stay at Belgirate. 
Milan terrifies me. Ido not like that odious Milanese fashion 
of chatting at the Scala every evening with a dozen persons, 
among whom it is hard if no one says something sweet. To 
me solitude is like the lump of amber in whose heart an insect 
lives for ever in unchanging beauty. Thus the heart and soul 
of a woman remain pure and unaltered in the form of their 
first youth. Is it the Zedesché that you regret ? 
* 28th. 
*«Ts your statue never to be finished? I should wish to 
have you in marble, in painting, in miniature, in every pos- 
sible form, to beguile my impatience. I still am waiting for 
the view of Belgirate from the south, and that of the balcony ; 
these are all that I now lack. Iam so extremely busy that 
to-day I can only write you nothing—but that nothing is 
everything. Was it not of nothing that God made the world ? 
That nothing is a word, God’s word: I love you! 
; “ 30¢h. 
**Ah! I have received your journal. Thanks for your 
punctuality. So you found great pleasure in seeing all the 
details of our first acquaintance thus set down? Alas! even 
while disguising them I was sorely afraid of offending you. 
We had no stories, and a Review without stories is a beauty 
without hair. Not being inventive by nature, and in sheer 
despair, I took the only poetry in my soul, the only adventure 
in my memory, and pitched it in the key in which it would 
bear telling; nor did I ever cease to think of you while 
writing the only literary production that will ever come from 
my heart, I cannot say from my pen. Did not the trans- 
formation of your fierce Sormano into Gina cause you to 


laugh ? 


364 ALBERT SAVARON. 


‘¢ You ask after my health. Well, it is better than in Paris. 
Though I work enormously, the peacefulness of the surround- 
ings has its effect on the mind. What really tries and ages 
me, dear angel, is the anguish of mortified vanity, the per- 
petual friction of Paris life, the struggle of rival ambitions. 
This peace is a balm. 

“¢ If you could imagine the pleasure your letter gives me !— 
the long, kind letter in which you tell me the most trivial 
incidents of your life. No! you women can never know to 
what a degree a-true lover is interested in these trifles. It was 
an immense pleasure to see the pattern of your new dress. 
Can it be a matter of indifference to me to know what you 
wear? If your lofty brow is knit? If our writers amuse you? 
If Canalis’ songs delight you? I read the books you read, 
Even to your boating on the lake; every incident touched me. 
Your letter is as lovely, as sweet as your soul! Oh! flower 
of heaven, perpetually adored, could I have lived without 
those dear letters, which for eleven years have upheld me in 
my difficult path like a light, like a perfume, like a steady 
chant, like some divine nourishment, like everything which 
can soothe and comfort life. 

**Do not fail me! If you knew what anxiety I suffer the 
day before they are due, or the pain a day’s delay can give 
me! Is she ill? Is Ae? I am midway between hell and 
paradise. 

‘** O mia cara diva, keep up your music, exercise your voice, 
practice. I am enchanted with the-coincidence of employ- 
ments and hours by which, though separated by the Alps, we 
live by precisely the same rule. The thought charms me and 
gives me courage. The first time I undertook to plead here— 
I forgot to'tell you this—I fancied that you were listening to 
me, and I suddenly felt the flash of inspiration which lifts the 
poet above mankind. IfIam returned to the Chamber—oh! 
you must come to Paris to be present at my first appearance 
there! 


ALBERT SAVARON. 365 


“ 30th, Evening. 

**Good heavens, how I love you! Alas! I have in- 
trusted too much to my love and my hopes. An accident 
which should sink that overloaded bark would end my life! 
For three years now I have not seen you, and at the thought 
of going to Belgirate my heart beats so wildly that I am 
forced to stop. To see you, to hear that girlish caressing 
voice! To embrace in my gaze that ivory skin, glistening 
under the candlelight, and through which I can read your 
noble mind! To admire your fingers playing on the keys, 
to drink in your whole soul in a look, in the tone of an Ocme 
or an Alderto! To walk by the blossoming orange trees, to 
live a few months in the bosom of that glorious scenery! 
That is life. What folly it is to run after power, a name, 
fortune! But at Belgirate there is everything; there is poetry, 
there is glory! I ought to have made myself your steward, 
or, as that dear tyrant whom we cannot hate proposed to me, 
live there as cavaliere servente, only our passion was too fierce 
to allow of it. 

‘* Farewell, my angel, forgive me my next fit of sadness in 
consideration of this cheerful mood ; it has come as a beam 
of light from the torch of Hope, which has hitherto seemed 
to me a will-o’-the-wisp.”’ 


“¢ How he loves her!’’ cried Rosalie, dropping the letter, 
which seemed heavy in her hand. ‘After eleven years, to 
write like this! ’’ 

*¢ Mariette,’’ said Mademoiselle de Watteville to her maid 
next morning, ‘‘ go and post this letter. Tell Jéréme that I 
know all I wished to know, and that he is to serve Monsieur 
Albert faithfully. We will confess our sins, you and I, without 
saying to whom the letters belonged, nor to whom they were 
going. I was in the wrong; I alone am guilty.”’ 

‘“* Mademoiselle has been crying?’’ said Mariette, noticing 
Rosalie’s eyes. 


366 ALBERT SAVARON. 


‘¢ Yes, but Ido not want that my mother should perceive 
it; give me some very cold water.’’ 

In the midst of the storms of her passion Rosalie ofteh lis- 
tened to the voice of conscience. ‘Touched by the beautiful 
fidelity of these two hearts, she had just said her prayers, 
telling herself that there was nothing left to her but to be 
resigned, and to respect the happiness of two beings worthy 
of each other, submissive to fate, looking to God for every- 
thing, without allowing themselves any criminal acts or wishes. 
She felt a better woman, and had a certain sense of satisfac- 
tion after coming to this resolution, inspired by the natural 
rectitude of youth. And she was confirmed in it by a girl’s 
idea: She was sacrificing herself for Azm. 

‘*She does not know how to love,” thought she. ‘* Ah! 
if it were I—I would give up everything to a man who loved 
me so. To be loved! When, by whom shall I -be loved? 
That little Monsieur de Soulas only loves my money; if I 
were poor, he would not even look at me.”’ 

‘Rosalie, my child, what are you thinking about? You 
are working beyond the outline,’’ said the Baroness to her 
daughter, who was making worsted-work slippers for the Baron. 


Rosalie spent the winter of 1834-35 torn by secret tumult ; 
but in the spring, in the month of April, when she reached 
the age of nineteen, she sometimes thought that it would be 
a fine thing to triumph over a Duchesse d’Argaiolo. In silence 
and solitude the prospect of this struggle had fanned her pas- 


sion and her evil thoughts. She encouraged her romantic 


daring by making plan after plan. Although such characters 
are an exception, there are, unfortunately, too many Rosalies 
in the world, and this story contains a moral which ought to 
serve them as a warning. 

In the course of this winter Albert Savaron had quietly made 
considerable progress in Besancon. Most confident of suc- 
cess, he now impatiently awaited the dissolution of the 


ALBERT SAVARON. 367 


Chamber. Among the men of the moderate party he had 
won the suffrages of one of the makers of Besancon, a rich 
contractor, who had very wide influence. 

Wherever they settled the Romans took immense pains, 
and spent enormous sums to have an unlimited supply of good 
water in every town of their empire. At Bensagon they 
drank the water from Arcier, a hill at some considerable dis- 
tance from Besancon. The town stands in a horseshoe circum- 
scribed by the river Doubs. Thus, to restore an aqueduct in 
order to drink the same water that the Romans drank, in a 
town watered by the Doubs, is one of those absurdities which 
only succeed in a country place where the most exemplary 
gravity prevails. If this whim could be brought home to the 
hearts of the citizens, it would lead to considerable outlay, and 
this expenditure would benefit the influential contractor. 

Albert Savaron de Savarus opined that the water of the 

river was good for nothing but to flow under a suspension 
bridge, and that the only drinkable water was that from 
Arcier. Articles were printed in the Review which merely 
expressed the views of the commercial interest of Besancon. 
The nobility and the citizens, the moderates and the legiti- 
mists, the government party and the opposition, everybody, in 
short, was agreed that they must drink the same water as the 
Romans, and boast of a suspension bridge. The question of 
the Arcier water was the order of the day at Besancon. At 
Besangon—as in the matter of the two railways to Versailles— 
as for every standing abuse—there were private interests un- 
confessed which gave vital force to this idea. The reasonable 
folk in opposition to this scheme, who were indeed but few, 
were regarded asold women. No one talked of anything but 
of Savaron’s two projects. And thus, after eighteen months 
of underground labor, the ambitious lawyer had succeeded in 
stirring to its depths the most stagnant town in France, the 
most unyielding to foreign influence, in finding the length of 
its foot, to use a vulgar phrase, and exerting a preponderant 


368 ALBERT SAVARON. 


influence without stirring from his own room. He had 
solved the singular problem of how to be powerful without 
being popular. 

In the course of this winter he won seven lawsuits for vari- 
ous priests of Besancon. At moments hecould breathe freely 
at the thought of his coming triumph. This intense desire, 
which made him work so many interests and devise so many 
springs, absorbed the last strength of his terribly overstrung 
soul. His disinterestedness was lauded, and he took his 
~ clients’ fees without comment. But this disinterestedness was, 
in truth, moral usury; he counted on a reward far greater to 
him than all the gold in the world. 

In the month of October, 1834, he had bought, ostensibly 
to serve a merchant who was in difficulties, with money loaned 
him by Léopold Hannequin, a house which gave him a quali- 
fication for election. He had not seemed to seek or desire 
this advantageous bargain. 

**You are really a remarkable man,’’ said the Abbé de 
Grancey, who, of course, had watched and understood the 
lawyer. The vicar-general had come to introduce to him a 
canon who needed his professional advice. ‘‘ You are a priest 
who has taken the wrong turning.’’ ‘This observation struck 
Savaron. 

Rosalie, on her part, had made up her mind, in her strong 
girl’s head, to get Monsieur de Savaron into the drawing-room 
and acquainted with the society of the Hétel de Rupt. So 
far she had limited her desires.to seeing and hearing Albert. 
She had compounded, so to speak, and a composition is often 
no more than a truce. 

Les Rouxey, the inherited estate of the Wattevilles, was 
worth just ten thousand francs a year; but in other hands it 
would have yielded a great deal more. The Baron in his 
indifference—for his wife was to have, and in fact had, forty 
thousand francs a year—left the management of Les Rouxey to 
a sort of factotum, an old servant of the Wattevilles named 


ALBERT SAVARON. 369 


Modinier. Nevertheless, whenever the Baron and his wife 
~ wished to go out of the town, they went to Les Rouxey, which is 
‘very picturesquely situated. The chateau and the park were, 

in fact, created by the famous Watteville, who in his active 

old age was passionately attached to this magnificent spot. 

Between two precipitous hills—little peaks with bare sum- 
mits known as the great and the little Rouxey—in the heart 
of a ravine where the torrents from the heights, with the 
Dent de Vilard at their head, come tumbling to join the 
lovely upper waters of the Doubs, Watteville had a huge dam 
constructed, leaving two cuttings for the overflow. Above 
this dam he made a beautiful lake, and below it two cascades ; 
and these, uniting a few yards below the falls, formed a 
lovely little river to irrigate the barren, uncultivated valley, 
hitherto devastated by the torrent. This lake, this valley, 
and these two hills he enclosed in a ring fence, and built him- 
self a retreat on the dam, which he widened to two acres by 
accumulating above it all the soil which had to be removed to 
make a channel for the river and the irrigation canals. 

When the Baron de Watteville thus obtained the lake above 
his dam he was owner of the two hills, but not of the upper 
valley thus flooded, through which there had been at all 
times a right-of-way to where it ends in a horseshoe under the 
Dent de Vilard.. But this ferocious old man was so widely 
dreaded, that so long as he lived no claim was urged by the 
inhabitants of Riceys, the little village on the farther side of 
the Dent de Vilard. When the Baron died, he left the slopes 
of the two Rouxey hills joined by a strong wall, to protect 
from inundation the two lateral valleys opening into the 
valley of Rouxey, to the right and left at the foot of the | 
Dent de Vilard. Thus he died the master of the Dent de 
Vilard. 

His heirs asserted their protectorate of the village of 
Riceys, and so maintained the usurpation. The old assassin, 
the old renegade, the old Abbé Watteville, ended his career 

24 ; 


~ 


370 ALBERT SAVARON. 


by planting trees and making a fine road over the shoulder of 
one of the Rouxey hills to join the high-road. The estate 


belonging to this park and house was extensive, but badly 


cultivated ; there were chalets on both hills and neglected 
forests of timber. It was all wild and deserted, left to the 
care of nature, abandoned to chance growths, but full of sub- 
lime and unexpected beauty. You may now imagine Les 
Rouxey. 

It is unnecessary to complicate this story by relating all the 
‘prodigious trouble and the inventiveness stamped with genius 
by which Rosalie achieved her end without allowing it to be 
suspected. It is enough to say that it was in obedience to her 
mother that she left Besangon in the month of May, 1835, in 
an antique traveling carriage drawn by a pair of sturdy hired 
horses, and accompanied her father to Les Rouxey. 

To a young girl love lurks in everything. When she rose, 
the morning after her arrival, Mademoiselle de Watteville 
saw from her bedroom window the fine expanse of water, 
from which the light mists rose like smoke, and were caught 


in the firs and larches, rolling up and along the hills till they 


reached the heights, and she gave a cry of admiration. 

‘‘ They loved by the lakes! She lives by a lake! A lake 
is certainly full of love!’’ she thought. 

A lake fed by snows has opalescent colors and a translucency 
that make it one huge diamond ; but when it is shut in like 
that of Les Rouxey, between two granite masses covered with 
pines, when silence broods over it like that of the Savannahs 
or the Steppes, then every one must exclaim as Rosalie did. 

“* We owe that,’’ said her father, ‘‘ to the notorious Watte- 
ville.”’ 

‘‘On my word,’’ said the girl, ‘* he did his best to earn 
forgiveness. Let us go in a boat to the farther end; it will 
give us an appetite for breakfast.”’ 

The Baron called two gardener lads who knew how to row, 
and took with him his prime minister, Modinier. The lake 


ee ee ee ge ay | en 


‘ 


‘ . 
7 allt, ie 2 ee 


ALBERT SAVARON. 371 


was about six acres in breadth, in some places ten or twelve, 
and four hundred in length. Rosalie soon found herself at 
the upper end shut in by the Dent de Vilard, the Jungfrau of 
that little Switzerland. 

«* Here we are, Monsieur le Baron,’’ said Modinier, signing 
to the gardeners to tie up the boat; ‘‘ will you come and 
look?” 

“Look at what ?’’ asked Rosalie. 

**Oh, nothing!’’ exclaimed the Baron. ‘‘ But you area 
sensible girl ; we have some little secrets between us, and I 
may tell you what ruffles my mind. Some difficulties have 
arisen since 1830 between the village authorities of Riceys 
and me, on account of this very Dent de Vilard, and I want 
to settle the matter without your mother knowing anything 
about it, for she is stubborn ; she is capable of flinging fire 
and flames broadcast, particularly if she should hear that the 
mayor of Riceys, a Republican, got up this action as a sop to 
his people.’’ 

Rosalie had presence of mind enough to disguise her delight, 
so as to work more effectually on her father. 

*¢ What action ?’’ said she. 

‘Mademoiselle, the people of Riceys,’’ said Modinier, 
** have long enjoyed the right of grazing and cutting fodder 
on their side of the Dent de Vilard. Now Monsieur Chan- 
tonnit, the mayor since 1830, declares that the whole Dent 
belongs to his district, and maintains that a hundred years 
ago, or more, there was a way through our grounds. You un- 
derstand that in that case we should no longer have them to 
ourselves. Then this barbarian would end by saying, what 
the old men in the village say, that the ground occupied by 
the lake was appropriated by the Abbé de Watteville. That 
would be the end of Les Rouxey; what next?’’ 

**Indeed, my child, between ourselves, it is the truth,” 
said Monsieur de Watteville simply. ‘‘ The land is an usurpa- 
tion, with no title-deed but lapse of time. And, therefore, to 


372 ALBERT. SAVARON. 


avoid all worry, I should wish to come to a friendly under- 
standing as to my border-line on this side of the Dent de 
Vilard, and I will then raise a wall.’’ 

‘‘If you give way to the municipality, it will swallow you 
up. You ought to have threatened Riceys.’’ 

“‘That is just what I told the master last evening,’’ said 
Modinier. ‘‘ But in confirmation of that view I proposed 
that he should come to see whether, on this side of the Dent 
or on the other, there may not be, high or low, some traces 
of an enclosure.’’ 

For a century the Dent de Vilard had been used by both 
parties without coming to extremities; it stood as a sort of 
party wall between the communes of Riceys and Les Rouxey, 
yielding little profit. Indeed, the object in dispute, being 
covered with snow for six months in the year, was of a nature 
‘to cool their ardor. Thus it required all the hot blast by 
which the revolution of 1830 inflamed the advocates of the 
people to stir up this matter, by which Monsieur Chantonnit, 
the mayor of Riceys, hoped to give a dramatic turn to his 
career on the peaceful frontier of Switzerland, and to immor- 
talize his term of office. Chantonnit, as his name shows, was 
a native of Neufchatel. 

‘« My dear father,’’ said Rosalie, as they got into the boat 
again, ‘“‘I agree with Modinier. If you wish to secure the 
joint possession of the Dent de Vilard, you must act with 
decision and get a legal opinion which will protect you against 
this enterprising Chantonnit. Why should you be afraid? 
Get the famous lawyer Savaron—engage him at once, lest 
Chantonnit should place the interests of the village in his 
hands. The man who won the case for the chapter against 
the town can certainly win that of Watteville versus Riceys! 
Besides,’’ she added, ‘‘ Les Rouxey will some day be mine— 
not for a long time yet, I trust. Well, then, do not leave me 
with a lawsuit on my hands. I like this place ; I shall often live 
here, and add to it as much as possible. On those banks,’’ and 


ALBERT SAVARON. 378 


she pointed to the feet of the two hills, ‘‘I shall cut flower- 
beds and make the loveliest English gardens. Let us go to 
Besancon and bring back with us the Abbé de Grancey, Mon- 
sieur Savaron, and my mother, if she cares to come. You can 
then make up your mind; but in your place I should have 
done so already. Your name is Watteville, and you are afraid 
of afight! If you should lose your case—well, I will never 
reproach you by a word!”’ 

“Oh, if that is the way you take it,’’ said the Baton, cat! 
am quite ready ; ; I will see the lawyer.”’ 

‘Besides, a lawsuit is really great fun. It brings some 
interest into life, with coming and going and raging over it. 
You will have a great deal to do before you can get hold of 
the judges. We did not see the Abbé de Grancey for three 
weeks, he was so busy! ”’ 

«« But the very existence of the chapter was involved,’’ said 
Monsieur de Watteville ; ‘‘ and then the archbishop’s pride, his 
conscience, everything that makes up the life of the priesthood, 
were at stake. That Savaron does not know what he did for 
the chapter! He saved it!’”’ 

** Listen to me,’’ said his daughter in his ear, ‘‘if you 
secure Monsieur de Savaron, you will gain your suit, won’t 
you? Well, then, let me advise you. You cannot get at 
Monsieur Savaron excepting through Monsieur de Grancey. 
Take my word for it, and let us together talk to the dear abbé, 
without my mother’s presence at the interview, for I know a 
way of persuading him to bring the lawyer to us.’’ 

**Tt will be very difficult to avoid mentioning it to your 
mother !’’ 

“*The Abbé de Grancey will settle that afterwards. But 
just make up your mind to promise your vote to Monsieur 
Savaron at the next election, and you will see! ”’ 

‘“Go to the election! take the oath?’’ cried the Baron de 
Watteville. 

‘¢ What then? ”’ said she. 


874 ALBERT SAVARON. 


*¢ And what will your mother say ?”’ 

“She may even desire you to do it,’’ replied Rosalie, 
knowing as she did from Albert’s letter to Léopold how deeply 
the vicar-general had pledged himself. 

Four days after, the Abbé de Grancey called very early one 
morning on Albert de Savaron, having announced his visit the 
day before. The old priest had come to win over the great 
lawyer to the house of the Wattevilles, a proceeding which 
shows how much tact and subtlety Rosalie must haveemployed . 
in an underhand way. 

‘What can I do for you, Monsieur le Vicaire-Général ?”’ 
asked Savaron. 

The abbé, who told his story with admirable frankness, was 
coldly heard by Albert. 

** Monsieur |’ Abbé,”’ said he, ‘‘ it is out of the question that 
I should defend the interests of the Wattevilles, and you shall 
understand why. My part in this town is to remain perfectly 
neutral. I will display no colors; I must remain a mystery 
till the eve of my election. Now, to plead for the Wattevilles 
would mean nothing in Paris, but here! Here, where every- 
thing is discussed, I should be nh Sorte by every one to be an 
ally of your Faubourg Saint-Germain.’ 

‘¢ What! do you suppose that you can remain unknown on 
the day of the election, when the candidates must oppose each 
other? It must then become known that your name is Savaron 
de Savarus, that you have held the appointment of master of 
appeals, that you supported the Restoration!”’ 

**On the day of the election,”’ said Savaron, ‘‘ I will be all 
I am expected to be; and I intend to speak at the preliminary 
meetings.”’ 

**If you have the support of Monsieur de Watteville and 
his party, you will get a hundred votes in a mass, and far 
more to be trusted than those on which you rely. It is always 
possible to produce division of interests; convictions are in- 
separable.”’ 


ALBERT SAVARON. 375 


** The deuce is in it!’’ said Savaron. ‘‘I am attached to 
you, and I could do a great deal for you, father! Perhaps we 
may compound with the devil. Whatever Monsieur de Watte- 
ville’s business may be, by engaging Girardet, and prompting 
him, it will be possible to drag the proceedings out till the 
elections are over. I will not undertake to plead till the day 
after I am returned.”’ 

**Do this one thing,’’ said the abbé. ‘‘ Come to the Hétel 
de Rupt: there is a young person of nineteen there who, one 
of these days, will have a hundred thousand francs a year, 
and you can seem to be paying your court to her of 

**Ah! the young lady I sometimes see in the kiosk ?”’ 

**Ves, Mademoiselle Rosalie,’’ replied the Abbé de Gran- 
cey. ‘‘You are ambitious. If she takes a fancy to you, 
you may be everything an ambitious man can wish—who 
knows? A minister perhaps. A man can always be a min- 
ister who adds a hundred thousand francs a year to your 
amazing talents.”’ 

*€ Monsieur |’ Abbé, if Mademoiselle de Watteville had three 
times her fortune, and adored me into the bargain, it would 
be impossible that I should marry her——’’ 

“You are married ?’’ exclaimed the abbé. 

**Not in church nor before the mayor, but morally speak- 
ing,’’ said Savaron. 

** That is even worse when a man cares about it as you seem 
to care,’’ replied the abbé. ‘‘Some things that are done 
can be undone. Do not stake your fortune and your pros- 
pects on a woman’s liking, any more than a wise man counts 
on a dead man’s shoes before starting on his way.”’ 

“* Let us say no more about Mademoiselle de Watteville,’’ 
said Albert gravely, ‘‘and agree as to the facts. At your 
desire—for I have a regard and respect for you—I will appear 
for Monsieur de Watteville, but after the elections. Until 
then Girardet must conduct the case under my instructions. 
That is the utmost I can do.’’ 








376 ALBERT SAVARON. 


‘‘ But there are questions involved which can only be set- 
tled after careful inspection of the localities,’’ said the vicar- 
general. 

‘* Girardet can go,’’ said Savaron. ‘‘I cannot allow myself, 
in the face of a town I know so well, to take any step which 
might compromise the supreme interests that lie beyond my 
election.” 

The abbé left Savaron after giving him a keen look, in 
which he seemed to be laughing at the young athlete’s uncom- 
promising politics, while admiring his firmness. 

‘*Ah! I would have dragged my father into a lawsuit—I 
would have done anything to get him here!’’ cried Rosalie 
to herself, standing in the kiosk and looking at the lawyer 
in his room, the day after Albert’s interview with the abbé, 
who had reported the result to her father. ‘‘I would have 
committed any mortal sin, and you will not enter the Watte- 
villes’ drawing-room ; I may not hear your fine voice! You 
make conditions when your help is required by the Watte- 
villes and the Rupts! Well, God knows, I meant to be con- 
tent with these small joys; with seeing you, hearing you 
speak, going with you to Les Rouxey, that your presence might 
to me make the place sacred. That was all I asked. But 
now—now I mean to be your wife. Yes, yes; look at her 
portrait, at er drawing-room, her bedroom, at the four sides 
of her villa, the points of view from her gardens. You expect 
her statue? I will make her marble herself towards you! 
After all, the woman does not love. Art, science, books, 
singing, music, have absorbed half her senses and her intelli- 
gence. She is old, too; she is past thirty; my Albert will 
not be happy!”’ 

‘¢ What is the matter that you stay here, Rosalie? ’’ asked 
her mother, interrupting her reflections. ‘‘ Monsieur de 
Soulas is in the drawing-room, and he observed your attitude, 
which certainly betrays more thoughtfulness than is due at 
your age.”’ 


ALBERT SAVARON. 877. 


‘Then is Monsieur de Soulas a foe to thought?’’ asked 
Rosalie. 

‘‘ Then you were thinking?’’ said Madame de Watteville. 

** Why, yes, mamma.’’ 

_ “Why, no! you were not thinking. You were staring at 
that lawyer’s window with an attention that is neither becom- 
ing nor decent, and which Monsieur de Soulas, of all men, 
ought never to have observed.’’ 

** Why ?”’ said Rosalie. 

“«Tt is time,’’ said the Baroness, ‘‘ that you should know 
what our intentions are. Amédée likes you, and you will not 
be unhappy as Comtesse de Soulas.”’ 

Rosalie, as white as a lily, made no reply, so completely 
was she stupefied by contending feelings. And yet, in the 
presence of the man she had this instant begun to hate vehe- 
mently, she forced the kind of smile which a ballet-dancer 
puts on for the public. Nay, she could even laugh ; she had 
the strength to conceal her rage, which presently subsided, 
for she was determined to make use of this fat simpleton to 
further her designs. 

‘‘ Monsieur Amédée,’’ said she, at a moment when her 
mother was walking ahead of them in the garden, affecting to 
leave the young people together, ‘‘ were you not aware that 
Monsieur Albert Savaron de Savarus is a Legitimist ?”’ 

«© A Legitimist ? ”’ 

‘Until 1830 he was master of appeals to the Council of 
State, attached to the Supreme Ministerial Council, and in 
favor with the Dauphin and Dauphiness. It would be very 
good of you to say nothing against him, but it would be 
better still if you would attend the election this year, carry 
the day, and hinder that poor Monsieur de Chavoncourt from 
representing the town of Besancon.”’ 

«¢ What sudden interest have you in this Savaron ?’’ 

‘¢ Monsieur Albert Savaron de Savarus, the natural son of 
the Comte de Savarus—pray keep the secret of my indis- 


378 ALBERT SAVARON. 


cretion—if he is returned deputy, will be our advocate in the 
suit about Les Rouxey. Les Rouxey, my father tells me, will be 
my property ; I intend to live there, it is a lovely place! I ~ 
should be broken-hearted at seeing that fine piece of the great 
de Watteville’s work destroyed.”’ 

‘*The devil! ’’ thought Amédée, as he left the house. 
‘¢ The heiress is not such a fool as her mother thinks her.’’ 

Monsieur de Chavoncourt is a Royalist, of the famous 221. 
Hence, from the day after the revolution of July, he always 
preached the salutary doctrine of taking the oaths and resist- 
ing the present order of things, after the pattern of the 
Tories against the Whigs in England. This doctrine was not 
acceptable to the Legitimists, who, in their defeat, had the 
wit to divide in their opinions, and to trust to the force of 
inertia, and to Providence. Monsieur de Chavoncourt was 
not wholly trusted by his own party, but seemed to the 
Moderates the best man to choose ; they preferred the triumph 
of his half-hearted opinions to the acclamation of a Repub- 
lican who should combine the votes of the enthusiasts and 
the patriots. 

Monsieur de Chavoncourt, highly respected in Besancon, 
was the representative of an old parliamentary family; his 
fortune, of about fifteen thousand francs a year, was not an 
offense to anybody, especially as he had a son and three 
daughters. With such a family, fifteen thousand francs a year 
are a mere nothing. Now when, under these circumstances, 
the father of the family is above bribery, it would be hard if 
the electors did not esteem him. Electors wax enthusiastic 
over a Jeau ideal of parliamentary virtue, just as the audience 
in the pit do at the representation of the generous sentiments 
they so little practice. 

Madame de Chavoncourt, at this time a woman of forty, 
was one of the beauties of Besancon. While the Chamber 
was sitting, she lived meagrely in one of their country places 
to recoup herself by economy for Monsieur de Chavoncourt’s 


ALBERT SAVARON. 379 


expenses in Paris. In the winter she received very creditably 
once a week, on Tuesdays, understanding her business as mis- 
tress of the house. Young Chavoncourt, a youth of two-and- 
twenty, and another young gentleman, named Monsieur de 
Vauchelles, no richer than Amédée and his school-friend, 
were his intimate allies. They made excursions together to 
Granvelle, and sometimes went out shooting ; they were so 
well-known to be inseparable that they were invited to the 
country together. 

Rosalie, who was intimate with the Chavoncourt girls, 
knew that the three young men had no secrets from each 
other. She reflected that if Monsieur de Soulas should repeat 
her words, it would be to his two companions. Now, Mon- 
sieur de Vauchelles had his matrimonial plans, as Amédée had 
his ; he wished to marry Victoire, the eldest of the Chavon- 
courts, on whom an old aunt was to settle an estate worth 
seven thousand francs a year, and a hundred thousand francs 
in hard cash, when the contract should be signed. Victoire 
was this aunt’s god-daughter and favorite niece. Conse- 
quently, young Chavoncourt and his friend Vauchelles would 
be sure to warn Monsieur de Chavoncourt of the danger he 
was in from Albert’s candidature. 

But this did not satisfy Rosalie. She sent the préfet of the 
department a letter written with her left hand, signed ‘‘ 4 
friend to Louts Philippe,’’ in which she informed him of the 
secret intentions of Monsieur Albert Savaron, pointing out 
the serious support a Royalist orator might give to Berryer, 
and revealing to him the deeply artful course pursued by the 
lawyer during his two years’ residence at Besancon. The 
préfet was a capable man, a personal enemy of the Royalist 
party, devoted by conviction to the government of July—in 
short, one of those men of whom, in the Rue de Grenelle, 
the Minister of the Interior could say, ‘‘ We have a capital 
préfet at Besancon.’’ The préfet read the letter, and, in 
obedience to its instructions, he burnt it. 


380 ALBERT SAVARON. 


Rosalie aimed at preventing Albert’s election, so as to 
keep him five years longer at Besancon. 

At that time an election was a fight between parties, and in 
order to win, the ministry chose its ground by choosing the 
moment when it would give battle. The elections were there- 
fore not to take place for three months yet. When a man’s 
whole life depends on an election, the period that elapses 
between the issuing of the writs for convening the electoral 
bodies and the day fixed for their meetings is an interval 
during which ordinary vitality is suspended. Rosalie fully 
understood how much latitude Albert’s absorbed state would 
leave her during these three months. By promising Mariette 
—as she afterwards confessed—to take both her and Jéréme 
into her service, she induced the maid to bring her all the 
letters Albert might send to Italy, and those addressed to him 
from that country. And all the time she was pondering these 
machinations, the extraordinary girl was working slippers for 
her father with the most innocent air in the world. She even 
made a greater display than ever of candor and simplicity, 
quite understanding how valuable that candor and innocence 
would be to her ends. 

‘¢My daughter grows quite charming!’’ said Madame de 
Watteville. 

Two months before the election a meeting was held at the 
house of Monsieur Boucher senior, composed of the contractor 
who expected to get the work for the acqueduct for the Arcier 
waters; of Monsieur Boucher’s father-in-law; of Monsieur 
Granet, the influential man for whom Savaron had done a ser- 
vice, and who was to nominate him as a candidate; of Gir- 
ardet the lawyer; of the printer of the Zastern Review; and 
of the president of the Chamber of Commerce. In fact, the 
assembly consisted of twenty-seven persons in all, men who in 
the provinces are regarded as bigwigs. Each man represented 
on an average six votes, but in estimating their value they said 
ten, for men always begin by exaggerating their own influ- 


ALBERT SAVARON. 381 


ence. Among these twenty-seven was one who was wholly 
devoted to the préfet, one false brother who secretly looked 
for some favor from the ministry, either for himself or for 
some one belonging to him. 

At this preliminary meeting, it was agreed that Savaron the 
lawyer should be named as candidate, a motion received with 
such enthusiasm as no one looked for from Besangon. Albert, 
waiting at home for Alfred Boucher to fetch him, was chatting 
with the Abbé de Grancey, who was interested in this absorb- 
ing ambition. Albert had appreciated the priest’s vast politi- 
cal capacities; and the priest, touched by the young man’s 
entreaties, had been willing to become his guide and adviser 
in this culminating struggle. The chapter did not love Mon- 
sieur de Chavoncourt, for it was his wife’s brother-in-law, as 
president of the Tribunal, who had lost the famous suit for 
them in the lower court. 

*¢ You are betrayed, my dear fellow,’’ said the shrewd and 
worthy abbé, in that gentle, calm voice which old priests 
acquire. 

‘Betrayed !’’ cried the lawyer, struck to the heart. 

«* By whom I know not at all,’’ the priest replied. ‘‘ But 
at the préfecture your plans are known, and your hand read 
like a book. At this moment I have no advice to give you. © 
Such affairs need consideration. As for this evening, take 
the bull by the horns, anticipate the blow. Tel] them all 
your previous life, and thus you will mitigate the effect of the 
discovery on the good folks of Besangon.”’ 

*¢ Oh, I was prepared for it,’’ said Albert in a broken voice. 

** You would not benefit by my advice ; you had the oppor- 
tunity of making an impression at the Hétel de Rupt; you 
do not know the advantage you would have gained pe 

<¢ What ?”’ 

‘The unanimous support of the Royalists, an immediate 
readiness to go to the election—in short, above a hundred 
votes. Adding to these what, among ourselves, we call the 





382 ALBERT SAVARON. 


ecclesiastical vote, though you were not yet nominated, you 
were master of the votes by ballot. Under such circumstances, 
a man may temporize, may make his way < 

Alfred Boucher when he came in, full of enthusiasm, to 
announce the decision of the preliminary meeting, found the 
vicar-general and the lawyer cold, calm, and grave. 

‘¢ Good-night, Monsieur |’Abbé,’”’ said Albert. ‘We will 
talk of your business at greater length when the elections are 
over.”’ 

And he took Alfred’s arm, after pressing Monsieur de 
Grancey’s hand with meaning. The priest looked at the am- 
bitious man, whose face at that moment wore the lofty expres- 
sion which a general may have when he hears the first gun 
fired for a battle. He raised his eyes to heaven, and left the 
room, saying to himself, ‘*‘ What a priest he would make!”’ 

Eloquence is not at the bar. The pleader rarely puts forth 
the real powers of his soul; if he did, he would die of it in a 
few years. Eloquence is, nowadays, rarely in the pulpit; but 
it is found on certain occasions in the Chamber of Deputies, 
when an ambitious man stakes all to win all, or, stung by a 
myriad of darts, at a given moment bursts into speech. But it 
is still more certainly found in some privileged beings, at the 
inevitable hour when their claims must either triumph or be 
wrecked, and when they are forced to speak. Thus at this 
meeting, Albert Savaron, feeling the necessity of winning him- 
self some supporters, displayed all the faculties of his soul and 
the resources of his intellect. He entered the room well, 
without awkwardness or arrogance, without weakness, without 
cowardice, quite gravely, and was not dismayed at finding 
himself ‘among twenty or thirty men. ‘The news of the meet- 
ing and of its determination had already brought a few docile 
sheep to follow the bell. 

Before listening to Monsieur Boucher, who was about to 
deluge him with a speech announcing the decision of the 
Boucher Committee, Albert begged for silence, and, as he 





ALBERT SAVARON. 383 


shook hands with Monsieur Boucher, tried to warn him, by a 
sign, of an unexpected danger. 

«« My young friend, Alfred Boucher, has just announced to 
me the honor you have done me. But before that decision is 
irrevocable,’’ said the lawyer, ‘<I think that Lought to explain 
to you who and what your candidate is, so as to leave you free 
to take back your word if my declarations should disturb your 
conscience !’’ 

This exordium was followed by profound silence. Some 
of the men thought it showed a noble impulse. 

Albert gave a sketch of his previous career, telling them his 
real name, his action under the Restoration, and revealing him- 
self as a new man since his arrival at Besancon, while pledging 
himself for the future. This address held his hearers breath- 
less, it was said. These men, all with different interests, were 
spellbound by the brilliant eloquence that flowed at boiling 
heat from the heart and soul of this ambitious spirit. Admira- 
tion silenced reflection. Only one thing was clear—the thing 
which Albert wished to get into their heads— 

Was it not far better for the town to have one of those men 
who are born to govern society at large than a mere voting- 
machine? A statesman carries power with him. A common- 
place deputy, however incorruptible, is but a conscience. 
What a glory for Provence to have found a Mirabeau, to 
return the only statesman since 1830 that the revolution of 
July had produced! 

Under the pressure of this eloquence, all the audience 
believed it great enough to become a splendid political instru- 
ment in the hands of their representative. They all saw in 
Albert Savaron, Savarus the great Minister. And, reading the 
secret calculations of his constituents, the clever candidate 
gave them to understand that they would be the first to enjoy 
the right of profiting by his influence. 

This confession of faith, this ambitious programme, this 
retrospect of his life and character was, according to the only 


384 ALBERT SAVARON. 


man present who was capable of judging of Savaron (he has 
since become one of the leading men of Besangon), a master- 
piece of skill and of feeling, of fervor, interest, and fascina- 
tion. This whirlwind carried away the electors. Never had 
any man had such a triumph. But, unfortunately, speech, 
a weapon only for close warfare, has only an immediate effect. 
Reflection kills the word when the word ceases to overpower 
reflection. If the votes had then been taken, Albert’s name 
would undoubtedly have come out of the ballot-box. At the 
moment, he was conqueror. But he must conquer every day 
for two months. 

Albert went home quivering. The townsfolk had applauded 
him, and he had achieved the great point of silencing before- 
hand the malignant talk to which his early career might give 
rise. The commercial interest of Besancon had unanimously 
nominated the lawyer, Albert Savaron de Savarus, as its 
candidate. 

Alfred Boucher’s enthusiasm, at first infectious, presently 
became blundering. 

The préfet, alarmed by this success, set to work to count 
the ministerial votes, and contrived to have a secret interview 
with Monsieur de Chavoncourt, so as to effect a coalition in 
their common interests. Every day, without Albert being 
able to discover how, the voters in the Boucher Committee 
diminished in number. 

Nothing could resist the slow grinding of the préfecture. 
Three or four clever men would say to Albert’s clients, ** Will 
the deputy defend you and win your lawsuits? Will he give 
you advice, draw up your contracts, arrange your compromises? 
He will be your slave for five years longer, if, instead of 
returning him to the Chamber, you only hold out the hope 
of his going there five years hence.’’ 

This calculation did Savaron all the more mischief, because 
the wives of some of the merchants had already made it. 
The parties interested in the matter of the bridge and that of 


7 eT eee a eee ee ee ae ee ed 


2 


ALBERT SAVARON. 885 


the water from Arcier could not hold out against a talking-to 
from a clever ministerialist, who proved to them that their 
safety lay at the préfecture, and not in the hands of an ambi- 
tious man. Each day was a check for Savaron, though each 
day the battle was led by him and fought by his lieutenants— 
a battle of words, speeches, and proceedings. He dared not 
go to the vicar-general, and the vicar-general never showed 
himself. Albert rose and went to bed in a fever, his brain 
on fire. 

At last the day dawned of the first struggle, practically the 
show of hands ; the votes are counted, the candidates estimate 
their chances, and clever men can prophesy their failure or 
success. It is a decent hustings, without the mob, but for- 
midable ; agitation, though it is not allowed any physical 
display, as it is in England, is not the less profound. The 
English fight these battles with their fists, the French with 
hard words. Our neighbors have a scrimmage, the French 
try their fate by cold combinations calmly worked out. This 
particular political business is carried out in opposition to the 
character of the two nations. 

The Radical party named their candidate; Monsieur de 
Chavoncourt came forward; then Albert appeared, and was 
accused by the Chavoncourt Committee and the Radicals of 
being an uncompromising man of the Right, a second Berryer. 
The ministry had their candidate, a stalking-horse, useful 
only to receive the purely ministerial votes. The votes, thus 
divided, gave no result. The Republican candidate had 
twenty, the Ministry got fifty, Albert had seventy, Monsieur 
de Chavoncourt obtained sixty-seven. But the préfet’s party 
had perfidiously made thirty of its most devoted adherents 
vote for Albert, so as to deceive the enemy. The votes for 
Monsieur de Chavoncourt, added to the eighty votes—the 
real number—at the disposal of the préfecture would carry 
the election, if only the préfet could succeed in gaining over 
a few of the Radicals. A hundred and sixty votes were not 

25 


386 ALBERT SAVARON. 


recorded: those of Monsieur de Grancey’s following and the 
Legitimists. 

The show of hands at an election, like a dress rehearsal at 
a theatre, is the most deceptive thing in the world. Albert 
Savaron came home, putting a brave face on the matter, but 
half-dead. He had had the wit, the genius, or the good-luck 
to gain, within the last fortnight, two staunch supporters— 
Girardet’s father-in-law and avery shrewd old merchant to 
whom Monsieur de Grancey had sent him. These two worthy 
men, his self-appointed spies, affected to be Albert’s most 
ardent opponents in the hostile camp. Towards the end of 
the show of hands they informed Savaron, through the 
medium of Monsieur Boucher, that thirty voters, unknown, 
were secretly working against him in his party, playing the 
same sharp trick that they were playing for his benefit on the 
other side. 

A criminal marching to execution could not suffer as 
Albert suffered as he went home from the hall where his fate 
was at stake. The despairing lover could endure no compan- 
ionship. He walked through the streets alone, between eleven 
o’clock and midnight. At one in the morning, Albert, to 
whom sleep had been unknown for the past three days, was 
sitting in his library in a deep armchair, his face as pale as if 
he were dying, his hands hanging limp, in a forlorn attitude 
worthy of the Magdalen. Tears hung on his long lashes, 
tears that dim the eyes, but do not fall; fierce thought drinks 
them up, the fire of the soulconsumes'them. Alone, he might 
weep. And then, under the kiosk, he saw a white figure, 
which reminded him of Francesca. 

‘* And for three months I have had no letter from her! 
What has become of her? Ihave not written for two months, 
but Iwarnedher. Issheill? Ohmylove! Mylife! Will 
you ever know what I have gone through? What a wretched 
constitution is mine! Have I an aneurism?’’ he asked him- 
self, feeling his heart beat so violently that its pulses seemed 








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ALBERT SAVARON. 387 


audible in the silence like little grains of sand dropping on a 
big drum, 

At this moment three distinct taps sounded on his door; 
Albert hastened to open it, and almost fainted with joy at 
seeing the vicar-general’s cheerful and triumphant mien. 
Without a word, he threw his arms round the Abbé de Grancey, 
held him fast, and clasped him closely, letting his head fall on 
the old man’s shoulder. He was a child again; he cried as 
he had cried on hearing that Francesca Soderini was a married 
woman. He betrayed his weakness to no one but to this 
priest, on whose face shone the light of hope. The priest had 
been sublime, and as shrewd as he was sublime. 

‘‘Forgive me, dear abbé, but you come at one of those 
moments when the man vanishes, for you are not to think me 
vulgarly ambitious.”’ 

**Oh! I know,”’ replied the abbé. ‘‘ You wrote ‘Amdition 
Jor love’s sake!’ Ah! my son, it was love in despair that 
made me a priest in 1786, at the age of two-and-twenty. In 
1788 I wasin charge of a parish. Iknowlife. Ihave refused 
three bishoprics already ; I mean to die at Besancon.”’ 

«¢Come and see her!’’ cried Savaron, seizing a candle, and 
leading the abbé into the handsome room where hung the 
portrait of the Duchess d’Argaiolo, which he lighted up. 

‘« She is one of those women who are born to reign! ”’ said 
the vicar-general, understanding how great an affection Albert 
showed him by this mark of confidence. ‘‘ But there is pride 
on that brow; it is implacable; she would never forgive an 
insult! It is the Archangel Michael, the angel of execution, 
the inexorable angel. ‘ All or nothing’ is the motto of this 
type of angel. There is something divinely pitiless in that 
head.”’ 

You have guessed well,’’ cried Savaron. ‘‘ But, my dear 
abbé, for more than twelve years now she has reigned over 
my life, and I have not a single thought for which to blame 
myself——”’ 





888 ALBERT SAVARON. 


‘Ah! if you could only say the same of God!” said the 
priest with simplicity. ‘* Now, to talk of your affairs. For 
ten days I have been at work for you. If you are a real poli- 
tician, this time you will follow my advice. You would not 
be where you are now if you would have gone to the Watte- 
villes when I first told you. But you must go there to- 
morrow ; I will take you in the evening. The Rouxey estates 
are in danger; the case must be defended within three days. 
The election will not be over in three days. They will take 
good care not to appoint examiners the first day. There 
will be several voting days, and you will be elected by 
ballot te 

‘* How can that be?’’ asked Savaron. 

‘*By winning the Rouxey lawsuit you will gain eighty 
Legitimist votes ; add them to the thirty I can command, and 
you have a hundred and ten. Then, as twenty remain to 
you of the Boucher Committee, you will have a hundred and 
thirty in all.”’ 

‘‘Well,’’ said Albert, ‘‘ we must get seventy-five more.”’ 

‘«Ves,’’ said the priest, ‘‘ since all the rest are ministerial. 
But, my son, you have two hundred votes, and the préfecture 
no more than a hundred and eighty.”’ 

‘*T have two hundred votes ?’’ said Albert, standing stupid 
with amazement, after starting to his feet as if shot up by a 
spring. 

*©You have those of Monsieur de Chavoncourt,’’ said the abbé. 

‘*How?”’ said Albert. 

“¢ You will marry Mademoiselle Sidonie de Chavoncourt.”’ 

‘* Never! ”’ 

‘¢ You will marry Mademoiselle Sidonie de Chavoncourt,” 
the priest repeated coldly. 

‘* But you see—she is inexorable,’’ said Albert, pointing to 
Francesca. 

‘«¢ You will marry Mademoiselle Sidonie de Chavoncourt,”” 
said the abbé calmly for the third time. 





ALBERT SAVARON. 38) 


This time Albert understood. The vicar-general would not 
be implicated in the scheme which at last smiled on the 
despairing politician. A word more would have compromised 
the priest’s dignity and honor. 

‘¢ To-morrow evening at the Hétel de Rupt you will meet 
Madame de Chavoncourt and her second daughter. You can 
thank her beforehand for what she is going to do for you, and 
tell her that your gratitude is unbounded, that you are hers 
body and soul, that henceforth your future is that of her 
family. You are quite disinterested, for you have so much 
confidence in yourself that you regard the nomination as 
deputy as a sufficient fortune. 

“© You will have a struggle with Madame de Chavoncourt ; 
she will want you to pledge your word. All your future life, 
my son, lies in that evening. But, understand clearly, I have 
nothing todowithit. I am answerable only for the Legitimist 
voters; I have secured Madame de Watteville, and that means 
all the aristocracy of Besancon. Amédée de Soulas and Vau- 
chelles, who will both vote for you, have won over the young 
men; Madame de Watteville will get the old ones. As to 
my electors, they are infallible.’”’ 

«¢ And who on earth has gained over Madame de Chavon- 
court ?’’ asked Savaron. 

«¢ Ask me no questions,’’ replied the abbé. ‘‘ Monsieur de 
Chavoncourt, who has three daughters to marry, is not capable 
of increasing his wealth. Though Vauchelles marries the 
eldest without anything from her father, because her old aunt 
is to settle something on her, what is to become of the two 
others? Sidonie is sixteen, and your ambition is as good as 
a gold mine. Some one has told Madame de Chavoncourt 
that she will do better by getting her daughter married than 
by sending her husband to waste his money in Paris. That 
some onle manages Madame de Chavoncourt, and Madame de 
Chavoncourt manages her husband.’’ 

** That is enough, my dear abbé. I understand. When 


390 ALBERT SAVARON. 


once I am returned as deputy, I have somebody’s fortune to 
make, and by making it large enough I shall be released from 
my promise. In me you have a son, a man who will owe his 
happiness to you. Great heavens! what have I done to 
deserve so true a friend ?’’ 

‘*You won a triumph for the chapter,” said the vicar- 
general, smiling. ‘‘ Now, as to all this, be as secret as the 
tomb. We are nothing, we have done nothing. If we were 
known to have meddled in election matters, we should be 
eaten up alive by the Puritans of the Left—who do worse— 
and blamed by some of our own party, who want everything. 
Madame de Chavoncourt has no suspicion of my share in all 
this. Ihave confided in no one but Madame de Watteville, 
whom we may trust as we trust ourselves,’’ 

‘I will bring the Duchess to you to be blessed!” cried 
Savaron. 

After seeing out the old priest, Albert went to bed in the 
swaddling-clothes of power. 


Next evening, as may well be supposed, by nine o’clock 
Madame la Baronne de Watteville’s rooms were crowded by the 
aristocracy of Besangon in convocation extraordinary. They 
were discussing the exceptional step of going to the poll, to 
oblige the daughter of the de Rupts. It was known that the 
former master of appeals, the secretary of one of the most 
faithful ministers under the elder branch, was to be presented 
that evening. Madame de Chavoncourt was there with her 
second daughter Sidonie, exquisitely dressed, while her elder 
sister, secure of her lover, had not indulged in any of the arts 
of the toilet. In country towns these little things are re- 
marked. The Abbé de Grancey’s fine and clever head was 
to be seen moving from group to group, listening to every- 
thing, seeming to be apart from it all, but uttering those 
incisive phrases which sum up a question and direct the issue. 

“If the elder branch were to return,’’ said he to an old 


ALBERT SAVARON. 391 


statesman of seventy, ‘‘ what politicians would they find?”’ 
‘* Berryer, alone on his bench, does not know which way to 
turn ; if he had sixty votes, he would often scotch the wheels 
of the government and upset ministries!’’ ‘* The Duc de 
Fitz-James is to be nominated at Toulouse.’’ ‘‘ You will 
enable Monsieur de Watteville to win his lawsuit.’’ ‘If you 
vote for Monsieur Savaron, the Republicans will vote with you 
rather than with the Moderates !’’ etc., etc. 

At nine o’clock Albert had not arrived. Madame de 
Watteville was disposed to regard such delay as an imperti- 
nence. 

*¢ My dear Baroness,’’ said Madame de Chavoncourt, ‘‘ do 
not let such serious issues turn on such a trifle. The varnish 
on his boots is not dry—or a consultation, perhaps, detains 
Monsieur de Savaron.”’ 

Rosalie shot a side glance at Madame de Chavoncourt. 

«She is very lenient to Monsieur de Savaron,’’ she whis- 
pered to her mother. 

“You see,’’ said the Baroness, with a smile, ‘‘ there is a 
question of a marriage between Sidonie and Monsieur de 
Savaron.”’ 

Mademoiselle de Watteville hastily went to a window look- 
ing out over the garden. 

At ten o’clock Albert de Savaron had not yet appeared. 
The storm that threatened now burst. Some of the gentlemen 
sat down to cards, finding the thing intolerable. The Abbé 
de Grancey, who did not know what to think, went to the 
window where Rosalie was hidden, and exclaimed aloud in 
his amazement, ‘‘ He must be dead !”’ 

The vicar-general stepped out into the garden, followed 
by Monsieur de Watteville and his daughter, and they all 
three went up to the kiosk. In Albert’s rooms all was dark ; 
not a light was to be seen. 

««Jér6me!’’ cried Rosalie, seeing the servant in the yard 
below. The abbé looked at her with astonishment. ‘‘ Where 


392 ALBERT SAVARON 


in the world is your master?’’ she asked the man, who came 
to the foot of the wall. 

‘‘ Gone—in a post-chaise, mademoiselle.”’ 

‘¢ He is ruined !’’ exclaimed the Abbé de Grancey, ‘‘ or he 
is happy !’’ 5 

The joy of triumph was not so effectually concealed on 
Rosalie’s face that the vicar-general could not detect it. He 
affected to see nothing. 

‘‘ What can this girl have had to do with this business? ’’ 
he asked himsélf. 

They all three returned to the drawing-room, where Mon- 
sieur de Watteville announced the strange, the extraordinary, 
the prodigious news of the lawyer’s departure, without any 
reason assigned for his evasion. By half-past eleven only 
fifteen persons remained, among them Madame de Chavan- 
court and the Abbé de Godenars, another vicar-general, a 
man of about forty, who hoped for a bishopric ; the two Cha- 
voncourt girls and Monsieur de Vauchelles, the Abbé de 
Grancey, Rosalie, Amédée de Soulas, and a retired magis- 
trate, one of the most influential members of the upper circle 
of Besancon, who had been very eager for Albert’s election. 
The Abbé de Grancey sat down by the Baroness in such a 
position as to watch Rosalie, whose face, usually pale, wore a 
feverish flush. 

‘‘ What can have happened to Monsieur de Savaron ?”’ said 
Madame de Chavoncourt. 

At this moment a servant in livery brought in a letter for 
the Abbé de Grancey on a silver tray. 

‘‘Pray read it,’’ said the Baroness de Watteville, with 
manifest interest. . 

The vicar-general read the letter ; he saw Rosalie suddenly 
turn as white as her kerchief. 

‘She recognizes the writing,’’ said he to himself, after 
glancing at the girl over his spectacles. He folded up the 
letter, and calmly put it in his pocket without a word. In 


ALBERT SAVARON. 393 


three minutes he had met three looks from Rosalie which were 
enough to make him guess everything. 

‘She is in love with Albert Savaron !’’ thought the vicar- 
general. 

He rose and took leave. He was going-towards the door 
when, in the next room, he was overtaken by Rosalie, who 
said— 

‘« Monsieur de Grancey, it was from Albert 

“‘ How do you know that it was his writing, to recognize it 
from so far? ’”’ 

The girl’s reply, caught as she was in the toils of her impa- 
tience and rage, seemed to the abbé sublime. 

‘I love him! What is the matter?’’ she said after a 
pause. 

“* He gives up the election.”’ 

Rosalie put her finger to her lip. 

‘*T ask you to be as secret as if it were a confession,’’ 
said she before returning to the drawing-room. ‘‘If there 
is an end of the election, there is an end of the marriage with 
Sidonie.’’ 


? 
! 


In the morning, on her way to mass, Mademoiselle de Wat- 
teville heard from Mariette some of the circumstances which 
had prompted Albert’s disappearance at the most critical mo- 
ment of his life. 

*« Mademoiselle, an old gentleman from Paris arrived yes- 
terday morning at the Hétel National; he came in his own 
carriage with four horses, and a courier in front, and a servant. 
Indeed, Jér6me, who saw the carriage returning, declares he 
could only be a prince or a milord.”’ 

‘¢ Was there a coronet on the carriage?’’ asked Rosalie. 

**T do not know,”’ said Mariette. ‘ Just as two was striking 
he came to call on Monsieur Savaron, and sent in his card ; 
and when he saw it, Jér6me says Monsieur turned as pale asa 
sheet, and said he was to be shown in. | As he himself locked 


304° ALBERT SAVARON. 


the door, it is impossible to tell what the old gentleman and 
the lawyer said to each other; but they were together above 
an hour, and then the old gentleman, with the lawyer, called 
up his servant. Jér6éme saw the servant go out again with an 
immense package, four feet long, which looked like a great 
painting on canvas. The old gentleman had in his handa 
large parcel of papers. Monsieur Savaron was paler than 
death, and he, so proud, so dignified, was in a state to be 
pitied. But he treated the old gentleman so respectfully that 
he could not have been politer to the king himself. Jér6me 
and Monsieur Albert Savaron escorted the gentleman to his 
carriage, which was standing with the horses in. The courier 
started on the stroke of three. 

‘Monsieur Savaron went straight to the préfecture, and 
from that to Monsieur Gentillet, who sold him the old travel- 
ing carriage that used to belong to Madame de Saint-Vier 
before she died ; then he ordered post-horses for six o’clock. 
He went home to pack; no doubt he wrote a lot of letters; . 
finally, he settled everything with Monsieur Girardet, who 
went to him and stayed till seven. Jér6éme carried a note to 
Monsieur Boucher, with whom his master was to have dined ; 
and then, at half-past seven, the lawyer set out, leaving 
Jéré6me with three months’ wages, and telling him to find 
another place. 

‘* He left his keys with Monsieur Girardet, whom he took 
home, and at his house, Jéréme says, he took a plate of soup, 
for at half-past seven Monsieur Girardet had not yet dined. 
When Monsieur Savaron got into the carriage again he looked 
like death. Jér6éme, who, of course, saw his master off, heard 
him tell the postillion ‘The Geneva Road !’”’ 

‘‘Did Jéréme ask the name of the stranger at the Hétel 
National ?”’ ; 

«As the old gentleman did not mean to stay, he was not 
asked for it. The servant, by his orders no doubt, pretended 
not to speak French.?’ 


ALBERT SAVARON. 395 


“‘And the letter which came so late to the Abbé de Gran- 
cey?’’ said Rosalie. 

“‘Tt was Monsieur Girardet, no doubt, who ought to have 
delivered it; but Jéréme says that poor Monsieur Girardet, 
who was much attached to lawyer Savaron, was as much upset 
as he was. So he who came so mysteriously, as Mademoiselle 
Galard says, is gone away just as mysteriously.”’ 

After hearing this narrative, Mademoiselle de Watteville 
fell into a brooding and absent mood, which everybody could 
see. It is useless to say anything of the commotion that arose 
in Besancon on the disappearance of Monsieur Savaron. It 
was understood that the préfect had obliged him with the 
greatest readiness by giving him at once a passport across the 
frontier, for he was thus quit of his only opponent. Next day 
Monsieur de Chavoncourt was carried to the top by a majority 
of a hundred and forty votes. 

**Jack is gone by the way he came,’’ said an elector on 
hearing of Albert Savaron’s flight. 

This event lent weight to the prevailing prejudice at 
Besancon against strangers ; indeed, two years previously they 
had received confirmation from the affair of the Republican 
newspaper. Ten days later Albert de Savaron was never 
spoken of again. Only three persons—Girardet the attorney, 
the vicar-general, and Rosalie—were seriously affected by his 
disappearance. Girardet knew that the white-haired stranger 
was Prince Soderini, for he had seen his card, and he told the 
vicar-general; but Rosalie, better informed than either of 
them, had known for three months past that the Duc d’Argaiolo 
was dead. 

In the month of April, 1836, no one had had any news 
from or of Albert de Savaron. Jéréme and Mariette were to 
be married, but the Baroness confidentially desired her maid 
to wait till her daughter was married, saying that the two 
weddings might take place at the same time. 

‘‘It is time that Rosalie should be married,’’ said the 


396 ALBERT SAVARON. 


Baroness one day to Monsieur de Watteville. ‘She is nine- 
teen, and she is fearfully altered in these last months.’’ 

‘*T do not know what ails her,’’ said the Baron. 

‘*When fathers do not know what ails their daughters, 
mothers can guess,’’ said the Baroness; ‘‘we must get her 
married.”’ 

‘‘T am quite willing,’’ said the Baron. ‘‘I shall give her | 
Les Rouxey now that the court has settled our quarrel with the 
authorities of Riceys by fixing the boundary line at three 
hundred feet up the side of the Dent de Vilard. Iam having 
a trench made to collect all the water and carry it into the 
lake. The village did not appeal, so the decision is final.”” ' 

‘‘It has never yet occurred to you,’’ said Madame de 
Watteville, ‘‘ that this decision cost me thirty thousand francs 
handed over to Chantonnit. That peasant would take noth- 
ing else; he sold us peace. If you give away Les Rouxey, 
you will have nothing left,’’ said the Baroness. 

‘©T do not need much,”’ said the Baron; ‘‘I am breaking 
up.”’ 

‘* You eat like an ogre!”’ 

‘¢Just so. But however much I may eat, I feel my legs 
get weaker and weaker i 

‘* Tt is from working the lathe,’’ said his wife. 

‘*‘T do not know,”’ said he. 

‘We will marry Rosalie to Monsieur de Soulas; if you 
give her Les Rouxey, keep the life interest. I will give them 
fifteen thousand francs a year in the funds. Our children can 
live here ; I do not see that they are much to be pitied.”’ 

‘No. Ishall give them Les Rouxey out and out. Rosalie 
is fond of Les Rouxey.”’ 

‘You are a queer man with your daughter! It does not 
occur to you to ask me if I am fond of Les Rouxey.’’ 

Rosalie, at once sent for, was informed that she was to 
marry Monsieur de Soulas one day early in the month of 
May. 





ALBERT SAVARON. 397 


*¢T am very much obliged to you, mother, and to you too, 
father, for having thought of settling me; but I do not mean 
to marry ; I am very happy with you.”’ 

‘« Mere speeches! ’’ said the Baroness. ‘‘ You are not in 
love with Monsieur de Soulas, that is all.”’ _ 

«Tf you insist on the plain truth, I will never marry Mon- 
sieur de Soulas i 

“*Oh! the sever of a girl of nineteen!’’ retorted her 
mother, with a bitter smile. 

“The never of Mademoiselle de Watteville,’’ said Rosalie 
with firm decision. ‘‘ My father, I imagine, has no intention 
of making me marry against my wishes?’’ 

‘« No, indeed no!’’ said the poor Baron, looking affection- 
ately at his daughter. 

** Very well!’’ said the Baroness, sternly controlling the 
rage of a bigot startled at finding herself unexpectedly defied, 
** you yourself, Monsieur de Watteville, may take the respon- 
sibility of settling your daughter. Consider well, Made- 
moiselle, for if you do not marry to my mind you will get 
nothing out of me! ”’ 

The quarrel thus begun between Madame de Watteville 
and her husband, who took his daughter’s part, went so far 
that Rosalie and her father were obliged to spend the summer 
at Les Rouxey ; life at the Hétel de Rupt was unendurable. 
It thus became known in Besancon that Mademoiselle de 
Watteville had positively refused the Comte de Soulas. 

After their marriage Mariette and Jér6me came to Les 
Rouxey to succeed Modinier in due time. The Baron re- 
stored and repaired the house to suit his daughter’s taste. 
When she heard that these improvements had cost about sixty 
thousand francs, and that Rosalie and her father were build- 
ing a conservatory, the Baroness understood that there was a 
leaven of spite in her daughter. The Baron purchased vari- 
ous outlying plots, and a little estate worth thirty thousand 
francs. Madame de Watteville was told that, away from her, 





398 ALBERT SAVARON. 


Rosalie showed masterly qualities, that she was taking steps to 
improve the value of Les Rouxey, that she had treated herself 
to a riding-habit and rode about; her father, whom she made 
very happy, who no longer complained of his health, and who 
was growing fat, accompanied her in her expeditions. As the 
Baroness’ name-day drew near—her name was Louise—the 
vicar-general came one day to Les Rouxey, deputed, no doubt, 
by Madame de Watteville and Monsieur de Soulas, to nego- 
tiate a peace between the mother and daughter. 

‘¢ That little Rosalie has a head on her shoulders,”’ said the 
folk of Besancon. 

After handsomely paying up the ninety thousand francs 
spent on Les Rouxey, the Baroness allowed her husband a thou- 
sand francs a month to live on; she would not put herself in 
the wrong. The father and daughter were perfectly willing 
to return to Besancon for the 15th of August, and to remain 
there till the end of the month. 

When, after dinner, the vicar-general took Mademoiselle de 
Watteville apart, to open the question of the marriage, by . 
explaining to her that it was vain to think any more of 
Albert, of whom they had had no news for a year past, he 
was stopped at once by a sign from Rosalie. The strange girl 
took Monsieur de Grancey by the arm, and led him to a seat 
under a clump of rhododendrons, whence there was a view of 
the lake. 

‘‘ Listen, dear abbé,’’ said she. ‘You whom I love as 
much as my father, for you had an affection for my Albert, I 
must at last confess that I committed crimes to become his 
wife, and he must be my husband. Here; read this.” 

She held out to him a number of the Gazeffe which she had 
in her apron pocket, pointing out the following paragraph 
under the date of Florence, May 25th: 

‘* The wedding of Monsieur le Duc de Rhétoré, eldest son 
of the Duc de Chaulieu, the former ambassador, to Madame la 
Duchesse d’Argaiolo, wée Princess Soderini, was solemnized 


ALBERT SAVARON. 399 


with great splendor. Numerous entertainments given in 
honor of the marriage are making Florence gay. The 
Duchess’ fortune is one of the finest in Italy, for the late 
Duke left her everything.”’ 

‘<The woman he loved is married,’’ said she. ‘‘I divided 
them.”’ . 

“*You? How?’’ asked the abbé. 

Rosalie was about to reply, when she was interrupted by a 
loud cry from two of the gardeners, following on the sound 
of a body falling into the water; she started, and .ran .off 
_ screaming, ‘“‘Oh! father!’’ The Baron had disappeared. 

In trying to reach a piece of granite on which he fancied 
he saw the impression of a shell, a circumstance which would 
have contradicted some system of geology, Monsieur de 
Watteville had gone down the slope, lost his balance, and 
slipped into the lake, which, of course, was deepest close 
under the roadway. The men had the greatest difficulty in 
enabling the Baron to catch hold of a pole pushed down at 
the place where the water was bubbling, but at last they 
pulled him out, covered with mud, in which he had sunk; he 
was getting deeper and deeper in, by dint of struggling. Mon- 
sieur de Watteville had dined heavily, digestion was in pro- 
gress, and was thus checked. 

When he had been undressed, washed, and put to bed, he 
was in such evident danger that two servants at once set out 
on horseback : one to ride to Besancon, and the other to fetch 
the nearest doctor and surgeon. When Madame de Watte- 
ville arrived, eight hours later, with the first medical aid from 
Besangon, they found Monsieur de Watteville past all hope, in 
spite of the intelligent treatment of the Rouxey doctor. The 
fright had produced serious effusion on the brain, and the 
shock to the digestion was helping to kill the poor man. 

This death, which would never have happened, said Madame 
de Watteville, if her husband had stayed at Besangon, was 
ascribed by her to her daughter’s obstinacy. She took an 


400 ALBERT SAVARON. 


aversion for Rosalie, abandoning herself to grief and regrets 
that were evidently exaggerated. She spoke of the Baron as 
“*her dear lamb! ”’ 

The last of the Wattevilles was buried on an island in the 
lake at Les Rouxey, where the Baroness had a little Gothic 
monument erected of white marble, like that called the tomb 
of Héloise at Pére-Lachaise, 

A month after this catastrophe the mother and daughter had 
settled in the Hotel de Rupt, where they lived in savage silence. 
Rosalie was suffering from real sorrow, which had no visible 
outlet; she accused herself of her father’s death, and she 
feared another disaster, much greater in her eyes, and very 
certainly her own work; neither Girardet the attorney nor 
the Abbé de Grancey could obtain any information con- 
cerning Albert. This silence was appalling. Ina paroxysm 
of repentance she felt that she must confess to the vicar-general 
the horrible machinations by which she had separated Fran- 
cesca and Albert. They had been simple, but formidable. 
Mademoiselle de Watteville had intercepted Albert’s letters to 
the Duchess as well as that in which Francesca announced 
her husband’s illness, warning her lover that she could write 
to him no more during the time while she was devoted, as was 
her duty, to the care of the dying man. Thus, while Albert 
was wholly occupied with election matters, the Duchess had 
' written him only two letters; one in which she told him that 
the Duc d’Argaiolo was in danger, and one announcing her 
widowhood—two noble and beautiful letters, which Rosalie 
kept back. 

After several nights’ labor she succeeded in imitating 
Albert’s writing very perfectly. She had substituted three 
letters of her own writing for three of Albert’s, and the rough 
copies which she showed to the old priest made him shudder 
—the genius of evil was revealed in them to such perfection. 
Rosalie, writing in Albert’s name, had prepared the Duchess 
for a change in the Frenchman’s feelings, falsely representing 


ALBERT SAVARON. 401 


him as faithless, and she had answered the news of the Duc 
d’Argaiolo’s death by announcing the marriage ere long of 
Albert and Mademoiselle de Watteville. The two letters, 
intended to cross on the road, had, in fact, done so. The 
infernal cleverness with which the letters were written so much 
astonished the vicar-general that he read them a second time. 
- Francesca, stabbed to the heart by a girl who wanted to kill 
_ love in her rival, had answered the last in these four words: 
**VYou are free. Farewell.’’ 

«¢ Purely moral crimes, which give no hold to human justice, 
are the most atrocious and detestable,’’ said the abbé severely. 
*« God often punishes them on earth; herein lies the reason 
of the terrible catastrophes which to us seem inexplicable. Of 
all secret crimes buried in the mystery of private life, the most 
disgraceful is that of breaking the seal of a letter, or of reading 
it surreptitiously. Every one, whoever it may be, and urged 
by whatever reason, who is guilty of such an act has stained 
his honor beyond retrieving. 

“«Do you not feel all that is touching, that is heavenly in 
the story of the youthful page, falsely accused, and carrying 
the letter containing the order for his execution, who sets out 
without a thought of ill, and whom Providence protects and 
saves—miraculously, we say! But do you know wherein the 
miracle lies? Virtue has a glory as potent as that of innocent 
childhood. 

**T say these things not meaning to admonish you,’’ said 
the old priest, with deep grief. ‘I, alas! am not your spirit- 
ual director ; you are not kneeling at the feet of God; Iam 
your-friend, appalled by dread of what your punishment may 
be. What has become of that unhappy Albert? Has he, 
perhaps, killed himself? There was tremendous passion 
under his assumption of calm. I understand now that old 
Prince Soderini, the father of the Duchess d’Argaiolo, came 
here to take back his daughter’s letters and portraits. This 
was the thunderbolt that fell on Albert’s head, and he went 


402 ALBERT SAVARON. 


off, no doubt, to try to justify himself. But how is it that in 
fourteen months he has given us no news of himself? ”’ 

“*Oh! if I marry him, he will be so happy !”’ 

‘‘ Happy? He does not love you. Besides, you have no 
great fortune to give him. Your mother detests you; you 
made her a fierce reply which rankles, and which will be 
your ruin. When she told you yesterday that obedience was 
the only way to repair your errors, and reminded you of the 
need for marrying, mentioning Amédée—‘ If you are so fond 
of him, marry him yourself, mother! ’—Did you, or did you 
not, fling these words in her teeth?’”’ 

‘* Yes,’’ said Rosalie. 

*¢ Well, I know her,’’ Monsieur de Grancey went on. ‘In 
a few months she will be Comtesse de Soulas! She will be 
sure to have children; she will give Monsieur de Soulas forty 
thousand francs a year; she will benefit him in other ways, 
and reduce your share of her fortune as much as possible. 
You will be poor as long as she lives, and she is but eight-and- 
thirty! Your whole estate will be the land of Les Rouxey, 
and the small share left to you after your father’s legal debts 
are settled, if indeed, your mother should consent to forego 
her claims on Les Rouxey. From the point of view of mate- 
rial advantages, you have done badly for yourself; from the 
point of view of feeling, I imagine you have wrecked your 
life. Instead of going to your mother ”? Rosalie shook 
her head fiercely. 

‘*To your mother,’’ the priest went on, ‘‘ and to religion, 
where you would, at the first impulse of your heart, have 
found enlightenment, counsel and guidance, you chose to act 
in your own way, knowing nothing of life, and listening only 
to passion ! ’’ 

These words of wisdom terrified Mademoiselle de Watte- 
ville. 

‘¢ And what ought I to do now?”’ she asked after a brief 


pause. 





ALBERT SAVARON. 403 


**To repair your wrongdoing, you must ascertain its ex- 
tent,’’ said the abbé. 

‘© Well, I will write to the only man who can know any- 
thing of Albert’s fate, Monsieur Léopold Hannequin, a notary 
in Paris, his friend from childhood.”’ 

‘Write no more, unless to do honor to truth,’’ said the 
vicar-general. ‘‘ Place the real and the false letters in my 
hands, confess everything in detail as though I were the keeper 
of your conscience, asking me how you may expiate your sins, 
and doing as I bid you. I shall see—for, above all things, 
restore this unfortunate man to his innocence in the eyes of the 
woman he had made his divinity on earth. Though he has 
lost his happiness, Albert must still hope for justification.” 

Rosalie promised to obey the abbé, hoping that the steps 
he might take would perhaps end in bringing Albert back to 
her. 


Not long after Mademoiselle de Watteville’s confession a 
clerk came to Besancon from Monsieur Léopold Hannequin, 
armed with a power of attorney from Albert; he called first 
on Monsieur Girardet, begging his assistance in selling the 
house belonging to Monsieur Savaron. The attorney under- 
took to do this out of friendship for Albert. The clerk from 
Paris sold the furniture, and with the proceeds could repay 
some money owed by Savaron to Girardet, who, on the occa- 
sion of his inexplicable departure, had lent him five thousand 
francs while undertaking to collect his assets. When Girardet 
asked what had become of the handsome and noble pleader, 
to whom he had been much attached, the clerk replied that 
no one knew but his master, and that the notary had seemed 
greatly distressed by the contents of the last letter he had 
received from Monsieur Albert de Savaron. 

On hearing this, the vicar-general wrote to Léopold. This 
was the worthy notary’s reply: 


404 ALBERT SAVARON. 


‘“*To Monsieur l’Abbé de Grancey, Vicar-General of the 
Diocese of Besancon. 
“PARIS. 

«¢ Alas, monsieur, it is in nobody’s power to restore Albert 
to the life of the world; he has renounced it. He is a novice 
in the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble. 
You know, better than I who have but just learned it, that on 
the threshold of that cloister everything dies. Albert, foresee- 
ing that I should go to him, placed the general of the order be- 
tween my utmost efforts and himself. I know his noble soul 
well enough to be sure that he is the victim of some odious 
plot unknown to us; but everything is atanend. The Duch- 
esse d’Argaiolo, now Duchesse de Rhétoré, seems to me to 
have carried severity to an extreme. At Belgirate, which she 
had left when Albert flew thither, she had left instructions 
leading him to believe that she was living in London. From 
London Albert went in search of her to Naples, and from 
Naples to Rome, where she was now engaged to the Duc de 
Rhétoré. When Albert succeeded in seeing Madame d’Ar- 
gaiolo, at Florence, it was at the ceremony of her marriage. 

‘* Our poor friend swooned in church, and even when he was 
in danger of death he could never obtain any explanation from 
this woman, who must have had I know not what in her 
heart. For seven months Albert had traveled in pursuit of a 
cruel creature who thought it sport to escape him; he knew 
not where or how to catch her. 

‘‘J saw him on his way through Paris ; and if you had seen 
him, as I did, you would have felt that not a word might be 
spoken about the Duchess, at the risk of bringing on an attack 
which might have wrecked his reason. If he had known what 
his crime was, he might have found means to justify himself; 
but being falsely accused of being married !—what could he 
do? Albert is dead, quite dead to the world. He longed for 
rest ; let us hope that the deep silence and prayer into which | 
he has thrown himself may give him happiness in another 


ALBERT SAVARON. 405 


guise. You, monsieur, who have known him, must greatly 
pity him ; and pity his friends also. 
‘¢ Yours, etc.’’ 


As soon as he received this letter the good vicar-general 
wrote to the general of the. Carthusian order, and this was the 
letter he received from Albert Savaron : 


‘‘Brother Albert to Monsieur l’Abbé de Grancey, Vicar- 
General of the Diocese of Besangon. 
“ LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE, 


“‘T recognized your tender soul, dear and well-beloved 
vicar-general, and your still youthful heart, in all that the 
reverend father general of our order has just told me. You 
have understood the only wish that lurks in the depths of my 
heart so far as the things of the world are concerned—to get 
justice done to my feelings by her who has treated me so 
badly! But before leaving me at liberty to avail myself of 
your offer, the general wanted to know that my vocation was 
sincere ; he was so kind as to tell me his idea, on finding that 
I was determined to preserve absolute silence on this point. 
If I had yielded to the temptation to rehabilitate the man 
of the world, the friar would have been rejected by this monas- 
tery. Grace has certainly done her work ; but, though short, 
the struggle was not the less keen or the less painful. Is not 
this enough to show you that I could never return to the 
world. 

«* Hence my forgiveness, which you ask for the author of so 
much woe, is entire and without a thought of vindictiveness. 
I will pray to God to forgive that young lady as I forgive her, 
and as I shall beseech Him to give Madame de Rhétoré a life 
of happiness. Ah! whether it be death, or the obstinate 
hand of a young girl madly bent on being loved, or one of the 
blows ascribed to chance, must we not all obey God? Sorrow 
in some souls makes a vast void through which the Divine 
yoice rings. J learned too Jate the bearings of this life on 


406 ALBERT SAVARON. 


that which awaits us ; all in me is worn out ; I could not serve 
in the ranks of the church militant, and I lay the remains of 
an almost extinct life at the foot of the altar. 

‘‘ This is the last time I shall ever write. You alone, who 
loved me, and whom I loved so well, could make me break 
the law of oblivion I imposed on myself when I entered these 
headquarters of Saint Bruno, but you are always especially 


named in the prayers of 


‘¢ BROTHER ALBERT. 
“ November, 1836.” 


‘Everything is for the best, perhaps,’’ thought the Abbé 
de Grancey. 

When he showed this letter to Rosalie, who with a pious 
impulse kissed the lines which contained her forgiveness, he 
said to her— 

‘Well, now that he is lost to you, will you not be recon- 
ciled to your mother and marry the Comte de Soulas?”’ 

‘¢ Only if Albert should order it,’’ said she. 

‘¢ But you see it is impossible to consult him. The general 
of the order would not allow it.”’ 

‘If I were to go to see him?”’ 

‘‘No Carthusian sees any visitor. Besides, no woman but 
the Queen of France may enter a Carthusian monastery,’’ said 
the abbé. ‘‘ So you have no longer any excuse for not marry- 
ing young Monsieur de Soulas.’’ 

‘¢T do not wish to destroy my mother’s happiness,’’ retorted 
Rosalie. 

‘¢ Satan !’’ exclaimed the vicar-general. 

Towards the end of that winter the worthy Abbé de Grancey 
died. This good friend no longer stood between Madame 
de Watteville and her Come to soften the impact of those 
two iron wills. 

The event he had foretold took place. In the month of 
August, 1837, Madame de Watteville was married to Monsieur 
de Soulas in Paris, whither she went by Rosalie’s advice, the 


ALBERT SAVARON. 407 


girl making a show of kindness and sweetness to her mother. 
Madame de Watteville believed in this affection on the part 
of her daughter, who simply desired to go to Paris to give 
herself the luxury of a bitter revenge ; she thought of nothing 
but avenging Savaron by torturing her rival. 

Mademoiselle de Watteville had been declared legally of 
age; she was, in fact, not far from one-and-twenty. Her 
mother, to settle with her finally, had resigned her claims on 
Les Rouxey, and the daughter had signed a release for all the 
inheritance of the Baron de Watteville. Rosalie encouraged 
her mother to marry the Comte de Soulas and settle all her 
own fortune on him. 

*« Let us each be perfectly free,’’ she said. 

Madame de Soulas, who had been uneasy as to her daugh- 
ter’s intentions, was touched by this liberality, and made her 
a present of six thousand francs a year in the funds as con- 
Science money. As the Comtesse de Soulas had an income 
of forty-eight thousand francs from her own lands, and was 
quite incapable of alienating them in order to diminish 
Rosalie’s share, Mademoiselle de Watteville was still a fortune 
to marry, of eighteen hundred thousand frances ; Les Rouxey, 
with the Baron’s additions, and certain improvements, might 
yield twenty thousand francs a year, besides the value of the 
house, rents, and preserves. So Rosalie and her mother, who 
soon adopted the Paris style and fashions, easily obtained 
introductions to the best society. The golden key—eighteen 
hundred thousand francs—embroidered on Mademoiselle de 
Watteville’s stomacher, did more for the Comtesse de Soulas 
than her pretentions @ Za de Rupt, her inappropriate pride, or 
even her rather distant great connections. 

In the month of February, 1838, Rosalie, who was eagerly 
courted by many young men, achieved the purpose which had 
brought her to Paris. This was to meet the Duchesse de 
Rhétoré, to see this wonderful woman, and to overwhelm her 
with perennial remorse. Rosalie gave herself up to the most 


408 ALBERT SAVARON., 


bewildering elegance and vanities in order to face the Duchess 
on an equal footing. 

They first met at a ball given annually after 1830 for the 
benefit of the pensioners on the old Civil List. A young 
man, prompted by Rosalie, pointed her out to the Duchess, 
saying— 

** There is a very remarkable young person, a strong-minded 
young lady too! She drove a.clever man into a monastery 
—the Grande Chartreuse—a man of immense capabilities, 
Albert de Savaron, whose career she wrecked. She is Made- 
moiselle de Watteville, the famous Besancon heiress A! 

The Duchess turned pale. Rosalie’s eyes met hers with 
one of those flashes which, between woman and woman, are 
more fatal than the pistol-shots of aduel. Francesca Soderini, 
who had suspected that Albert might be innocent, hastily 
quitted the ball-room, leaving the speaker at his wits’ end to 
guess what terrible blow he had inflicted on the beautiful 
Duchesse de Rhétoré, 





‘Tf you want to hear more about Albert, come to the 
opera ball on Tuesday with a marigold in your hand.”’ 

This anonymous note, sent by Rosalie to the Duchess, 
brought the unhappy Italian to the ball, where Mademoiselle 
de Watteville placed in her hand all Albert’s letters, with that 
written to Léopold Hannequin by the vicar-general, and the 
notary’s reply, and even that in which she had written her 
own confession to the Abbé de Grancey. 

‘¢T do not choose to be the only sufferer,’’ she said to her 
rival, ** for one has been as ruthless as the other.”’ 

After enjoying the dismay stamped on the Duchess’ beau- 
tiful face, Rosalie went away; she went out no more, and 
returned to Besancon with her mother. 


Mademoiselle de Watteville, who lived alone on her estate 
of Les Rouxey, riding, hunting, refusing two or three offers a 


ALBERT SAVARON. 409 


year, going to Besancon four or five times in the course of 
the winter, and busying herself with improving her land, was 
regarded as a very eccentric personage. She was one of the 
celebrities of the Eastern provinces. 

Madame de Soulas has two children, a boy and a girl, and 
she has grown younger; but young Monsieur de Soulas has 
aged a good deal. 

** My fortune has cost me dear,’’ said he to young Chavon- 
court. ‘‘ Really to know a bigot it is unfortunately necessary 
to marry her!’”’ . 

Mademoiselle de Watteville behaves in the most extra- 
ordinary manner. ‘‘She has vagaries,’’ people say. Every 
year she goes to gaze at the walls of the Grande Chartreuse. 
Perhaps she dreams of imitating her grand-uncle by forcing 
the walls of the monastery to find a husband, as Watteville 
broke through those of his monastery to recover his liberty. 

She left Besancon in 1841, intending, it was said, to get 
married ; but the real reason of this expedition is still un- 
known, for she returned home in a state which forbids her 
ever appearing in society again. By one of those chances of 
which the Abbé de Grancey had spoken, she happened to be 
‘on the Loire in a steamboat of which the boiler burst. 
Mademoiselle de Watteville was so severely injured that she 
lost her right arm and her left leg; her face is marked with 
fearful scars, which have bereft her of her beauty ; her health, 
cruelly upset, leaves her few days free from suffering. In 
short, she now never leaves the Chartreuse of Les Rouxey, 
where she leads a life wholly devoted to religious practices. 


Paris, May, 1842. 














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